Dressing Smart: The Military Portraits of John Smart and John Smart Junior

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Chicago:

Maggie Keenan, “Dressing Smart: The Military Portraits of John Smart and John Smart Junior,” essay in Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, Blythe Sobol, and Maggie Keenan, The Starr Collection of Portrait Miniatures, 1500–1850: The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, vol. 4, ed. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2025), https://doi.org/10.37764/8322.6.64.

MLA:

Keenan, Maggie. “Dressing Smart: The Military Portraits of John Smart and John Smart Junior,” essay. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, Blythe Sobol, and Maggie Keenan. The Starr Collection of Portrait Miniatures, 1500–1850: The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, edited by Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, vol. 4, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2025. doi: 10.37764/8322.6.64.

John Smart’s meticulous attention to detail, as expressed in the small scale of his portrait miniatures, illustrates the stylistic evolution of British military uniforms. Military men have a unique place within the genre because of the simultaneous rise of both military enlistment and portrait miniatures during the Georgian era (1714–1837). It is difficult to imagine the preeminence of the British military during this time, when there were as many as 112 different regiments,¹ and those who enlisted were as young as fifteen and from all socioeconomic backgrounds. In 1762, the peak year of the Seven Years’ War, there were an estimated eighty thousand men enlisted in the navy and ninety-three thousand in the army, along with twenty-eight thousand militiamen.² According to historian Matthew McCormack, “In an era when as many as one in four men had direct experience of wartime service, this was a society that was richly literate about military life.”³

Portrait miniatures offered portability, intimacy, and cost efficiency compared to large-scale oil paintings. They were a relatively inexpensive portrait option for men who were already spending a great deal of money on military promotions and uniforms.⁴ While oil paintings remained the favored medium for the highest-ranking admirals and lieutenant generals of the military, dressed in all their pomp and splendor, portrait miniatures, in contrast, cover a range of ranks.⁵ They served as critical tokens of remembrance for the families or loved ones of sailors, soldiers, and militiamen, immortalizing the likenesses of individuals who might never return home. For an eternalizing image like this, it was essential to look one’s best by wearing a uniform in impeccable condition. Smart, in particular, lavished incredible attention on the details of uniform decorations, so much so that one begins to wonder how he captured the very stitchwork in a single sitting. In Portrait of General Charles Cornwallis (Fig. 1), every thread is rendered in the twisting pattern of Cornwallis’s epaulette, and Smart accounts for each raised curve of the hanging fringe.

Little is known about Smart’s artistic practice, but there could be two explanations for how he captured these details. The first is that his military patrons had long or multiple sittings; the second and more likely explanation is that he kept uniforms in his studio for further study. In the latter scenario, he would have prioritized the sitter’s likeness during the formal sitting, documenting facial features and capturing the effects of lighting.⁶ (This is seen, for instance, in the faithful documentation of the scar below Portrait of a Man’s lip, General Cornwallis’s offset eyes, Colonel Keith MacAlister’s heterochromatic eyes, and the scar on Captain Pulteney Malcolm’s chin). Other aspects of the portrait, primarily clothing, could be rendered later with the help of preparatory sketches, a studio assistant, or a model wearing elements of the uniform left behind in the studio.

Smart’s Portrait of Pulteney Malcolm may document an instance in which the artist painted a uniform separately from a portrait sitting: Malcolm’s naval gold medal appears smaller than it would have looked on his chest (Fig. 2).⁷ While the proportions are off, Smart nevertheless captures the medal’s detail of a winged figure crowning Britannia with a spear in her left hand. This suggests that Smart studied the naval medal in some detail, beyond having seen it on Malcolm; he may have completed studies of this specific feature separately from the rest of the uniform. Malcolm might not have received the physical gold medal, awarded for his action during the battle of San Domingo in 1806, until after his sitting with Smart in 1809, in which case it would have been added later, thus explaining the distortion of scale.⁸

Uniform details would later become highly regimented and specific, from the collar height to the arrangement of buttons and display of medals, but there is little written documentation on such protocols from this time. Without regulations for how and where medals were to be worn, Smart’s portraits illustrate officers’ own interpretations, pinning them anywhere on their coat or lapels.⁹ In this case, rather than have the medal hang around his neck in the traditional manner (Fig. 3), Malcolm had the ribbon cut down and pinned to a buckle.

Details of a uniform, more so than any other article of clothing, can provide a wealth of information. Such is the case for a miniature formerly titled Portrait of a Man, which we can now confidently identify as an officer of the Honourable East India Company (HEIC) (Fig. 4). Because there are few surviving examples of the HEIC’s early naval uniform, Smart’s miniature provides historians with priceless visual evidence. Smart’s meticulous rendering depicts the captain’s black velvet collar and gilt frogging along the lapels, confirming the sitter’s association with the HEIC.¹⁰ Viewed under a microscope, the buttons reveal a painted anchor, one of very few depictions of this early HEIC button design.¹¹

Similar features of uniforms can be essential in determining the identity of military sitters for portrait miniatures. Such is the case with John Smart Junior’s (1776–1809) Portrait of George Babington, Battalion Surgeon of the 3rd Foot Guards, previously titled Portrait of a Man (Fig. 5). Here, the way in which the coat is buttoned up the front, lacking lapels, indicates a surgeon’s uniform. Likewise, the black collar and gold-trimmed redcoat is that of the 3rd Foot Guards. The gold medal he wears is from an 1801 campaign in Egypt. There were two surgeons enlisted in the 3rd Foot Guards in 1807, the date of this portrait, and only one of them fought in Egypt, leading to the conclusive identity of Battalion Surgeon George Babington.¹² Babington’s Sultan’s Medal for Egypt is rotated 90 degrees compared to other depictions;¹³ this variation, with the crescent moon at the bottom rather than left side, reiterates the lack of official regulations for displaying medals.

Just as clues can be extracted from the embellishments of a uniform, so too are meanings embedded within the garment itself. Encoded social messages encompassed British society’s anxiety toward raucous military men and shifting notions of masculinity. In the 1770s, there was a fear that young macaronis, heavily made-up men who wore tight, elaborate costumes and appeared effeminate, might destabilize the strength of the nation.¹⁴ The British military implemented new uniform regulations as a way to restrict officers’ creative license and prevent the excesses of dress associated with the macaroni. However, military men could still transform their physical appearance by adding chest padding to their coats, wearing tall plumed helmets, powdering their hair or wigs, or increasing their shoulders’ height and width with epaulettes.

Notwithstanding these enhancements, the intent of military uniform regulations was to present a unified and strong nation and improve the military’s public image. The Royal Navy, in particular, used uniform regulations as a way to communicate civility within a branch of service generally viewed as rough and unrefined. The elder Smart’s Portrait of Pulteney Malcolm presents the ideal gentleman: a well-dressed, clean-cut captain who worked his way up the ranks, beginning as a midshipman and eventually reaching the rank of admiral in 1837.¹⁵ Smart paints Malcolm as a freshly shaven, middle-aged man with hazel eyes and a kind demeanor. The only “roughness” in his image is a scar that runs diagonally across his chin. His uniform is immaculate, with a tiny anchor on all four of his forward-facing buttons.

Military uniforms and ceremonies were a form of masquerade, a public spectacle with an emphasis on seeing and being seen. One of the main reasons for the Royal Navy’s adoption of a uniform in 1748, relatively late compared to other nations, was the shifting of the public image of the navy from crude sailors to idealized gentlemen.¹⁶ With this change in perception came concern over maintaining social ranks. As McCormack observes, the institution “gave unprecedented numbers of civilian men access to fine uniforms and techniques of bodily cultivation, prompting concerns about the reach of politeness down the social scale.”¹⁷ The military provided opportunities, not normally available, for poor and working-class men to transform themselves, at least visually, into men of a higher station. Their lustrous uniforms had the ability to create an identity, to make their wearer appear like a trusted and well-mannered officer.¹⁸ According to the 1762 Yearly Chronicle, “Besides drinking, pillaging, swearing, debauching, dueling, and gaming, the fancy militia uniforms conferred a dubious gentility through which ‘bumpkins have been able to shine at country assemblies.’”¹⁹ Smart’s military men appear to be the antithesis of this image (Fig. 6); in fact, Smart actively sought commissions from war heroes to enhance his claims to fame and prominence.

Smart’s miniatures illustrate the success of England’s military leaders while also serving as an advertisement for the artist’s own abilities. This is exemplified by his Portrait of Charles Cornwallis, of which at least nine other versions exist, including a highly finished drawing. Preparatory drawings exist for four of Smart’s military portraits in the Starr Collection: a drawing of General Cornwallis at National Portrait Gallery, London; a colored drawing of Colonel MacAlister (notably, he is depicted in civilian clothing) at the Cleveland Museum of Art; and drawings of Captain Malcolm and Admiral Wells at the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, CA.²⁰ The drawings, three out of the four including a trompe l’oeil frame, were likely intended for print publication. This was the case with Commemoration of the 11th October 1797, a print collaboration with Smart’s closest artist friends.²¹ The portraits in that composition were compiled from Smart’s oeuvre of naval captains and admirals, including the Nelson-Atkins Portrait of John Wells, Rear-Admiral of the White,²² and were engraved by Robert Smirke (English, 1753–1845)²³ and published by Robert Bowyer (English, 1758–1834).²⁴ The print, which surely drew attention to Smart through its wide distribution, documents the Battle of Camperdown, considered the greatest victory of a British fleet over an equal enemy force.²⁵

With the Jacobite Rebellion, Seven Years’ War, American War of Independence, and the Napoleonic Wars, war and a fear of invasion were constants in Georgian England. The men who fought these battles left family and friends behind, providing Smart with a large military clientele anxious to commission what might be their last likeness. According to Art Prices Current, a published record of annual sales, 15 percent of the portraits by Smart that sold between 1934 and 1960 depicted military men.²⁶ The percentage of military sitters in his entire oeuvre is likely much higher when considering portraits sold privately or retained in family collections, as well as those with uncertain attributions that disassociate the sitter from the military. Of the seventy-one Smart miniatures in the Starr Collection, six sitters are wearing military uniforms, and one has a military title but is not depicted in uniform. Thus, 10 percent of the Smart portraits in the Starr collection are of military men; that figure may grow as research on the collection progresses.

Smart himself enlisted in the military, joining the St. Pancras Volunteers in 1798. His fellow officers included miniaturist John Downman (Welsh, 1750–1824), engraver John Dixon (Irish, ca. 1740–1811), publisher Rupert Green (English, 1767/1768–1804), painter Joseph Farington (English, 1747–1821), and Robert Smirke.²⁷ Smart’s son, John Smart Junior, followed in his father’s footsteps not only as a painter but also by joining the military, specifically the Royal Westminster Volunteer Infantry. New research has revealed that the younger Smart was an ensign in 1803 and reached the rank of lieutenant in 1805. Other artists in his infantry included John Pennington (English, 1773–1841), possibly the painter Benjamin Marshall (English, 1768–1835), and tea merchants Richard and George Twining, whose family were patrons of Smart senior.²⁸

Like his father’s, Smart Junior’s military involvement would have introduced him to new clientele. Of his at least forty-five known works, eleven of them depict military men, including a self-portrait in uniform.²⁹ This new discovery of the artist’s military involvement explains why his effects upon his death included a cocked hat, belted sword, pistol, and “1 Red Coat with an Epaulet.”³⁰ The Smart family’s connections to the military continue: the elder Smart’s daughter Sophia (1768–1794) married John Dighton (1761–1840), lieutenant general of the HEIC. Another daughter, Anna Maria (1766–1813), married Robert Woolf (1755–1836), officer of the 6th Madras Native Cavalry, and the couple’s nephew Charles Smart (1755–1798)³¹ was a lieutenant colonel of the HEIC. Charles’s son Charles Kenworthy Smart (1787–1806)³² was a lieutenant of the 1st Madras Infantry.³³

The military was clearly a large part of John Smart’s work and family life. He depicted every stitch of thread in his sitter’s uniforms, from the twisted fibers of hanging fringe to anchor-stamped buttons. Such meticulous detail provides insight into his sitters’ specific branch of the military, even leading to the identification of one sitter in the Starr Collection by name. The precision and attention to detail in Smart’s military miniatures facilitates a greater understanding of Georgian-era military attire. Smart’s legacy lives on not only in his talent as a miniaturist but also in the visual playbook of uniforms he provided for military scholars today.

Notes

1. This number frequently fluctuated as regiments were consolidated, renamed, or new ones created.

2. Stephen Conway, War, State, and Society in Mid-Eighteenth-Century Britain and Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 61.

3. Matthew McCormack, Embodying the Militia in Georgian England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 54. By the end of the eighteenth century, there were nearly one hundred thousand men enlisted in Britain’s militia. See Kirstin Olsen, Daily Life in 18th-Century England (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999), 131.

4. Stephen Conway, History of the British Army, 1714–1783 (Yorkshire: Pen and Sword, 2021), 17; Brian Lyndon, “Military Dress and Uniformity 1680–1720,” Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research 54, no. 218 (Summer 1976): 109; Olsen, Daily Life, 131. Soldiers were only paid about £14 a year, but more than 40 percent of army officers came from titled or landed families, so they could afford not only to enlist but to spend a substantial amount on buying uniforms and commissions. Uniforms were so expensive to replace that individuals often stripped dead and wounded men of their clothes (Louis Laguerre’s [French, 1663–1721] painted battle scenes at Marlborough House depict these naked men on the battlefield). Manufacturers and retailers also profited from uniforms. A London tradesman received £1,237 in May 1781 to produce the uniforms for the 22nd Light Dragoons. £1,237 would translate to more than £225,000 in 2022.

5. The Starr Collection includes a rare depiction of an officer in training in Thomas Heaphy’s Portrait of a Cadet from the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, F58-60/70.

6. Similarly to how he approached his preparatory drawings; see Portrait of Mr. Dickinson, ca. 1775, F58-60/131.

7. See Naval Gold Medal, awarded to Vice Admiral Cuthbert Collingwood, 1796, 1 5/16 in. (3.3 cm) diam., National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, MED0151. See Colllingwood’s presumed portrait in this catalogue, Portrait of a Naval Officer, Possibly Rear Admiral Cuthbert Collingwood, 1802, F58-60/42.

8. Paul Martinovich, The Sea is My Element: The Eventful Life of Admiral Sir Pulteney Malcolm 1768–1838 (Warwick: Helion, 2021), 110.

9. Peter Duckers, British Military Medals: A Guide for the Collector and Family Historian (Havertown: Pen and Sword, 2013), 122.

10. Katherine Gazzard, curator of art at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, confirmed this sitter attribution, according to a September 29, 2021, in-person conversation with the author.

11. Amy Miller, Dressed to Kill: British Naval Uniform, Masculinity and Contemporary Fashions, 1748–1857 (Greenwich: National Maritime Museum, 2007), 163–64. Later HEIC buttons include a lion standing atop the anchor.

12. A List of the Officers of the Army and of the Corps of Royal Marines (London: War Office, 1827), 520; Benjamin Guy Babington, Proceedings of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society of London (London: Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society, 1864), 86; Colonel William Johnston, Roll of Commissioned Officers in the Medical Service of the British Army (1727–1898), ed. Lieutenant-Colonel Harry Howell (Aberdeen: University Press, 1917), 91.

13. See Sultan’s Medal for Egypt, 1801, 1 5/8 in. (4.1 cm) diam., National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, MED2569.

14. For more information, see Kate Haulman, “Fashion and the Culture Wars of Revolutionary Philadelphia,” The William and Mary Quarterly 62, no. 4 (October 2005): 634. For more information on the “macaroni,” see Peter McNeil, Pretty Gentlemen: Macaroni Men and the Eighteenth-Century Fashion World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018).

15. Men who enlisted in the Royal Navy often followed male family members in the profession.

16. Miller, Dressed to Kill, 7.

17. McCormack, Embodying the Militia in Georgian England, 24.

18. Tim Fulford, “Sighing for a Soldier: Jane Austen and Military Pride and Prejudice,” Nineteenth-Century Literature 57, no. 2 (September 2002): 157.

19. McCormack, Embodying the Militia in Georgian England, 24; The Yearly Chronicle for M,DCC,LXI (London: T. Becket and R. Griffiths, 1762), 230.

20. John Smart, Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis, 1792, pencil and gray wash, 7 1/4 x 6 5/8 in. (18.4 x 16.8 cm), National Portrait Gallery, London, NPG 4316; John Smart, Portrait of General Keith MacAlister, ca. 1800–1810, watercolor and graphite heightened with traces of white gouache on paper, 6 7/8 x 5 1/2 in. (17.4 x 14 cm), Cleveland Museum of Art, Bequest of Mrs. A. Dean Perry, 1997.77; John Smart, Captain Pulteney Malcolm of the Donegal, 1809, pencil and wash, 5 7/8 x 5 1/2 in. (14.9 x 14 cm), Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, CA, Sir Bruce Ingram Collection, 63.52.235; John Smart, Captain John Wells of the Lancaster, 1797, watercolor over pencil, 6 1/8 x 4 7/8 in. (15.6 x 12.4 cm), Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, Sir Bruce Ingram Collection, 63.52.242.

21. George Noble and James Parker, after Robert Smirke and John Smart, Commemoration of the 11th October 1797, published 1803, line engraving, published by Robert Bowyer and John Edwards, 27 1/8 x 17 3/4 in. (68.9 x 45.2 cm), National Portrait Gallery, London, NPG D15178.

22. In the completed miniature of Wells, as well as the finished drawing, he is wearing civilian clothing. However, interestingly, in Commemoration of the 11th October 1797, while his posture and profile remain the same, he is wearing a naval uniform.

23. Smart also likely collaborated with friend and engraver James Fittler (1758–1835); see his portrait in this catalogue.

24. Bowyer instructed Smart Junior in miniature painting and was guardian to him and his sister, Sarah, while the elder Smart went abroad. Fittler was the individual who authenticated Smart Junior’s will. Smirke’s daughter Mary was best friend to Sarah Smart.

25. N. A. M. Rodger, The Command of the Ocean: A Naval History of Britain 1649–1815 (London: Penguin, 2004), 456.

26. This is based on the index; see Art Prices Current: A Record of Sale Prices at the Principal London and Other Auction Rooms August 1934 to August 1935, vol. 14 (London: The Art Trade Press, 1936), A359–A369, which lists sitters with a military rank in front of their name, or unidentified sitters such as “Portrait of an Officer.” Fifty-nine of the 377 portraits depict military sitters.

27. “MSS. of Farington Diary at Windsor” and “Commissions in the St. Pancras Volunteer Association signed by His Majesty; dated June 2, 1798,” The London Gazette, June 12, 1798, 523; “Commissions in the St. Pancras Volunteer Association, signed by His Majesty. Dated 3d December 1798,” The London Gazette, December 22, 1798, 1237; “St. Pancras Regiment of Loyal Volunteers,” The London Gazette, September 27, 1803, 1321; “St. Pancras Volunteers,” The London Gazette, October 15, 1803, 1426. Other militiamen included George Robinson (d. 1811), historian John Adolphus (1768–1845), and infamous HEIC merchant John Palmer (1767–1836). Smirke was an able soldier, with a “degree of intelligence and promptitude, which, except in the regular army, has scarcely ever been equalled”; see Sylvanus Urban, “Obituary: with Anecdotes of Remarkable Persons,” The Gentleman’s Magazine, and Historical Chronicle 85, no. 1 (Spring 1815): 477. Smirke’s son, Richard, later joined the volunteer infantry.

28. “Royal Westminster Volunteer Infantry,” The London Gazette, August 23, 1803, 1102.

29. Portrait of Lieutenant Charles Kentworthy Smart, sold at Christie’s on July 24, 1957, lot 21; Miles Boot, Ship’s Purser, 1797, previously in the collection of Philip Mould, London; Admiral Robert William, 1801, previously in the collection of Mr. H. Burton Jones; Lieutenant Lygon, 1803, in Lady Maria Ponsonby’s Collection; Captain Robert Woolf Junior, 1805, previously in the collection of Ellison Fine Art, London; Officer of Madras Native Cavalry, 1805, sold at Bonhams on November 23, 2005, lot 79; George Babington, Battalion Surgeon, 1807, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, F71-29/1; Captain Gregory, 1808, property of Edward Smirke; The Artist, 1808, property of Edward Smirke; Unknown Officer, 1809, National Army Museum, London, NAM1989-03-72–1; Admiral S. Young, property of Edward Smirke.

30. According to Daphne Foskett, John Smart: The Man and His Miniatures (London: Cory, Adams, and Mackay, 1964), 57.

31. Charles Smart married Sarah Ann Barlow (1792–1819), the daughter of Sarah Woolf and John Barlow. Sarah Woolf was Robert Woolf’s sister. Charles Smart’s connection to the miniature painter John Smart Senior remains unclear. Daphne Foskett believed him to be a brother or uncle. Foskett, John Smart, Table 1.

32. The mother of Charles Kenworthy Smart remains unknown.

33. Foskett, John Smart, 17. Tragically, Charles Kenworthy was killed in a mutiny on July 10, 1806, “at the hands of his own soldiers, who betrayed his hiding-place and that of two brother officers.” See the Smart family tree.

doi: 10.37764/8322.6.64