John Smart at Home and Abroad

English portrait miniaturist John Smart was a figure of contrasting reputations.¹ While there are no surviving account books, diaries, or letters from him or his family and only a handful of contemporaneous assessments of his character—ranging from coarse and self-assured to hubristic—his vast body of work and the nature of his clientele tell a fuller story.² Smart’s art, like his approach to life, was direct, unsparing, pragmatic, and confident. These traits fueled his rise to prominence as one of the foremost portrait miniaturists in mid-to-late eighteenth-century London, a period marked by shifting perceptions of portraiture and its subjects.³

At the heart of Smart’s style was an unvarnished realism. His works faithfully depict his sitters’ visages with meticulous precision, rendering nearly every detail with saturated color. This directness stood in stark contrast to the practices of many of his contemporaries, such as Richard Cosway (1742–1821), who catered to the fashionable elite by idealizing his subjects. Cosway’s works often exaggerated his sitters’ elegance and grandeur, pleasing patrons like the Prince of Wales and other members of the upper echelons of British society. The differences between Smart’s and Cosway’s approaches are clearly visible in their self-portraits. Cosway presents himself in profile, emphasizing his towering hairstyle and lavish attire, with sumptuous fabrics, including fur and lace, dominating the composition (Fig. 1). In contrast, Smart presents himself, in many of his self-portraits, in a very sober manner, gazing confidently out at the viewer. Here we see him dressed in a plain, dark jacket with a turned-down collar and a white stock tie (Fig. 2). Where Cosway’s flattery appealed to the court and the fashionable set, Smart’s realism resonated with the rising merchant and military classes—groups newly able to afford portraiture and eager to document their newfound wealth and status.

This shift in clientele reflected the broader transformation of portraiture during Smart’s lifetime. In the 1760s, the visibility of portraiture dramatically increased with the opening of the first public exhibition spaces of the Royal Academy and the Society of Artists of Great Britain. By the 1770s, the genre of portraiture reached newfound levels of popularity, sentiments encapsulated by an anonymous author writing in 1777 who declared, “In former times, Families of Distinction and Fortune alone employed the Painter in this line of the Profession. But in these days, the Parlour of the Tradesman is not considered as a furnished room, if the Family-Pictures do not adorn the wainscot.”⁴

Smart’s technique also reveals an attentiveness to his sitters’ social contexts, including gendered and class-specific conventions of beauty. Technical analysis undertaken as part of this study has shown that Smart used less paint in the depiction of women’s visages, often leaving the ivory bare, taking advantage of its natural luminosity to evoke the ideals of fairness associated with eighteenth-century feminine beauty.⁵ This approach aligned with broader artistic practices of the time but resonated particularly with his female clientele—wives, daughters, and female family members of the merchant and military classes—whose presentation often reflected modesty and naturalism, in contrast to the heavily “painted” visages associated with the fashionable ton in central London.⁶ While not unique to Smart, this technique highlights his sensitivity to his sitters’ place within society and the values they wished to embody in their portraits.⁷ Smart’s background as the son of a wig-maker and barber aligned him with this new market, making him uniquely positioned to capture their likenesses. In many ways, Smart was an artist of the people, for the people. His working-class origins enabled him to tap into the desires of a class eager to see themselves represented in art.

Smart’s early life and training, though somewhat elusive, have recently been clarified. Born January 20, 1741, he was the only son of John Smart, a peruke (wig) maker, and Mary Day.⁸ Baptized at St. Luke’s, Old Street, Finsbury, on January 24, 1741,⁹ Smart likely spent his childhood in or above his father’s shop, The White Peruke, on North-Audley Street near Grosvenor Square. The Westminster rate books confirm this address until 1763.¹⁰ He is probably the same John Smart, son of a wig-maker, admitted to St. Paul’s school on November 10, 1749, at the age of eight.¹¹ The neighborhood where Smart grew up, which was home to individuals of mixed social stations, included figures like John Manners, Marquess of Granby, a subject of Smart’s early work (Fig. 3). This blend of social classes gave Smart an understanding of his future clientele and provided early opportunities for commissions.

In 1755, at age fourteen, Smart apprenticed with William Shipley (1714–1803) at his drawing school in the Strand. Smart likely walked the two miles between North-Audley Street and John Street daily during his seven-year apprenticeship. Shipley’s academy aimed to elevate art beyond mere craft, emphasizing the study of proportion, perspective, and anatomy through drawing from antique statues and live models.¹² This rigorous training laid the foundation for Smart’s later precision in depicting the human face, even as the art world debated whether portraiture should capture idealized beauty or embrace the individual’s true likeness.

Smart’s classmate at Shipley’s school, Richard Cosway, gravitated toward the grand, idealized style later promoted by the oil painter Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792) at the Royal Academy.¹³ Smart, however, remained loyal to the Society of Artists and to a more grounded representation of character.¹⁴ This divergence between Cosway and Smart mirrored broader debates in eighteenth-century London about the role of portraiture, with the newly established annual exhibitions at the Society of Artists (1760) and Royal Academy (1768) intensifying these discussions.¹⁵

The 1760s marked the beginning of Smart’s professional career. His works from this period, including his Portrait of a Member of the Frankland Family, Probably Henry Cromwell Frankland from 1760 and portraits of the Reverend Richard Sutton Yates, from 1762, and his wife, Elizabeth Maria Yates, from 1761, all in the Starr Collection, reveal a charming, naïve simplicity and a softer palette compared to his later work. His sitters’ faces often appear mask-like, betraying little underlying structure, a style possibly influenced by the French instructors at the St. Martin’s Lane Academy, where Smart encountered artists like Hubert Gravelot (1699–1773) and Frances Hayman (1708–1776).¹⁶ However, by the end of the decade, Smart’s work had begun to evolve toward a more realistic, character-driven approach.

As Smart matured artistically, he also grew in his personal life. He married Mary Ann Howard in 1763, though the marriage ended around 1775 when she eloped with William Pars (1742–1782), a former Shipley school classmate.¹⁷ Over the course of his life, Smart would father six children with three women, including his son John Smart Junior (1776–1809), a product of his union with Sara Midgeley.¹⁸ Smart Junior followed in his father’s professional footsteps. For a detailed view of Smart’s ancestry, which includes new research and discoveries, see the John Smart Family Tree.

These changes in his family life aligned with a move from North-Audley Street to Dean Street in 1762, and then to 68 Berners Street in 1767, which marked Smart’s professional ascent. Berners Street was a fashionable address, home to high-ranking military men, colonial administrators, Honourable East India Company (HEIC) merchants, and civil servants—the very individuals who would become Smart’s core clientele.¹⁹

In the 1770s, as Smart entered the second decade of his professional career, his confidence and ambition became even more tangible in his rapid success within the Society of Artists. In 1771, he became its director, and in 1777, he rose to the rank of vice-president, making personal loans to support the society during financial difficulties.²⁰ His prominence within the Society of Artists—rather than the Royal Academy, where Cosway belonged—reflects his loyalty to those who appreciated the straightforward representation of character in portraiture. Despite Smart’s rising profile, his sitters from the 1770s remain largely unidentified. Of the twelve miniatures in the Starr collection from this decade, only one sitter is firmly known: Major William Davy, the Persian Secretary of Warren Hastings, Governor General of Bengal. But judging by details of dress and personal adornment, Smart’s clientele reflected the rising military and merchant classes—groups that had no historical access to portraiture but now had the financial means to commission their likenesses. Smart’s realism and attention to detail aligned perfectly with their desire for truthful representation.

Throughout his career, Smart was keenly aware of the power of portraits to construct identity, both for his clients and for himself. He painted at least nine self-portraits, more than any other contemporaneous portrait miniature painter, as a way to bolster his image. These self-portraits presented him as a professional, confident, and grounded artist. Smart likely also commissioned a medal in 1777 bearing his profile, modeled by Joachim Smith (ca. 1737–1814) and cut by John Kirk (1724–1778), further promoting his status.²¹ This careful self-fashioning was central to his career, marking him as a man determined to control how he was perceived by both clients and peers.

Smart’s self-awareness extended to his meticulous signing and dating of every miniature he produced. By doing so, he ensured that his work was always attributed to him, reinforcing his reputation. His precision and consistency set him apart in an era when portraiture was edging toward mass production: Smart wanted to retain the importance of authorship.

Unlike his contemporaries, who often sought royal patronage, Smart maintained his focus on a broader clientele. Although he received a few royal commissions, including one from the Duke of Cumberland and another from the Prince of Wales, Smart never gained the sustained royal patronage that Cosway enjoyed.²² This may have influenced his decision to leave London for India in 1785, where he would continue to serve the needs of members of HEIC merchants and administrators—clients who shared his comparatively pragmatic approach to life.

John Smart’s career was shaped by his astute recognition of the societal changes unfolding in eighteenth-century Britain. By aligning his unvarnished realism with the values of the rising merchant and military classes, he captured a newly empowered segment of society eager to commemorate their wealth and status. His direct approach, which favored authenticity over the idealized elegance of his contemporaries, including Richard Cosway, resonated deeply with clients who sought to define their identities within a rapidly expanding visual culture.

As public exhibition spaces opened new avenues for artistic display, Smart positioned himself at the intersection of accessibility and craftsmanship. Through his meticulously signed and dated miniatures, he not only affirmed the individuality of his sitters but also asserted his own artistic identity. This duality of purpose—celebrating the aspirations of his clients while securing his legacy—marks Smart as a democratizer of portraiture. His decision to follow the rising class to India underscores his entrepreneurial spirit and his ability to adapt to the shifting currents of wealth and opportunity.

Smart’s legacy endures as a chronicler of a transformative age, where art became both a personal and societal statement. In capturing the faces of a burgeoning class, he created a body of work that reflects not only the aspirations of his sitters but also the broader evolution of British society.

Notes

1. Although Smart was one of the most important and prolific portrait miniaturists of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, information about his early life and training remains elusive. Building from Arthur Jaffé’s manuscripts, Daphne Foskett took up the charge to produce the artist’s first biography in 1964; see Daphne Foskett, John Smart: The Man and His Miniatures (London: Cory, Adams, and Mackay, 1964). This effort was followed fifty years later in 2014 by Emma Rutherford, Lawrence Hendra, and colleagues in a monographic exhibition catalogue at Philip Mould, John Smart: A Genius Magnified, exh. cat. (London: Philip Mould, 2014). This essay and the research related to John Smart herein builds from their collective work.

2. Welsh landscape painter Thomas Jones (1742–1803) described John Smart as “a muckworm—and as his brutal appetites were sufficiently satiated, he treated her [his wife with whom William Pars eloped] with rude neglect.” See A. P. Oppé, ed., “Memoirs of Thomas Jones, Penkerrig, Radnorshire,” Volume of the Walpole Society 32 (1946–48): 73–74. However, as Arthur Jaffé cautions, the assassination of Smart’s character must be viewed in the context of the delicate situation between Smart, Pars, and the former Mrs. Smart. See Arthur Jaffé, “John Smart, Miniature Painter, 1741(?)–1811: His Life and Iconography,” Art Quarterly 17 (1954): 245.

3. This subject is widely discussed among scholars. See Martin Postle, Mark Hallett, Tim Clayton, and Stella Tillyard, Joshua Reynolds: The Creation of Celebrity, exh. cat. (London: Tate, 2005). See also David Solkin, ed., Art on the Line: The Royal Academy Exhibitions at Somerset House 1780–1836 (London: Paul Mellon Centre for British Art, 2001).

4. Anonymous [William Combe], introduction to A Poetical Epistle to Sir Joshua Reynolds, Knt and President of the Royal Academy (London: Fielding and Walker, 1777), unpaginated.

5. The study of John Smart’s palette in four select miniatures within the Nelson-Atkins collection has been part of a Mellon Science Research project undertaken by John Twilley with the support of NAMA objects conservator Stephanie Spence. The research question grew out of the prevalence of pink hair among Smart’s sitters alongside the lack of pink hair among Smart’s contemporaries, other than those associated with his circle, in oil or miniature. The observation about Smart’s painting technique of utilizing more paint in his male sitter’s portraits and less paint in the faces of his female sitters can be found in the related reports for the four following miniatures: John Smart, Portrait of a Man, 1773, F65-41/11; Portrait of a Man, 1778, F65-41/19; Charlotte Porcher, 1787, F65-41/28; Mrs. Ronalds, 1798, F65-41/39.

6. See Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, “Dangerous Beauty: Painted Canvases and Painted Faces in Eighteenth-Century Britain” (PhD diss., Case Western Reserve University, 2007), 239–42. See also Caroline Palmer, “Brazen Cheek: Face-Painters in Late Eighteenth-Century England,” Oxford Art Journal 31, no. 2 (2008): 195–213.

7. For a discussion of cosmetics and race, see Tassie Gwilliam, “Cosmetic Poetics: Colouring Faces in the Eighteenth Century,” in Veronica Kelly and Dorothea von Mücke, eds., Body and Text in the Eighteenth Century (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994), 152–59. See also Angela Rosenthal, “Visceral Culture: Blushing and the Legibility of Whiteness in Eighteenth-Century British Portraiture,” Art History 27, no. 4 (September 2004): 563–92.

8. A different child named John Smart was born June 26, 1741, at St. Anne’s Church, Dean Street, Soho, to Phillip Francis Smart and Ann, about whom little else is known; St. Anne’s Soho Baptisms, July 1, 1721–December 30, 1767, vol. 2, City of Westminster Archive Centre. Hendra misidentified this John Smart as John Smart the miniaturist in the 2014 Philip Mould publication; see Rutherford et al., John Smart: A Genius Magnified, 12–15. In a review of that exhibition, Neil Jeffares set the record straight; see Neil Jeffares, “John Smart’s Parents,” December 2, 2014, Neil Jeffares: Fairness, Candour and Curiosity—from Finance to Art History (blog), https://neiljeffares.wordpress.com/2014/12/02/john-smarts-parents.

9. See London Church of England Parish Registers, ref. P76/LUK/001, London Metropolitan Archives. I would like to thank Starr Research Assistant Maggie Keenan for sharing parish records with me related to John Smart’s family. For a list of Smart’s siblings, marriages, children, and descendants, see the family tree within this catalogue.

10. As cited in Jeffares, “John Smart’s Parents.”

11. Jaffé, “John Smart, Miniature Painter,” 242.

12. D. G. C. Allan, William Shipley: Founder of the Royal Society of Arts; A Biography with Documents (London: Kahle/Austin Foundation, 1968), 83.

13. In Reynolds’s fourth discourse, he writes, “perfect form is produced by leaving out particularities, and retaining only general ideas," and "it gives what is called the grand style, to Invention, to Composition, to expression and even to Colouring and Drapery.” Sir Joshua Reynolds, Discourses on Art, ed. Robert R. Wark (New Haven: Yale University Press in association with the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 1997), 41 (lines 15, 23–27), 57 (lines 11–15).

14. Arthur Jaffé notes that on March 22, 1774, feeling the competing pressure of the newly opened Royal Academy in 1768 not only as a venue for exhibitions but for paying members, Smart “and some fourteen other Fellows, including Thomas Jones, agreed upon a penalty of £100 not to exhibit elsewhere for three years.” See Jaffé, “John Smart, Miniature Painter,” 243.

15. For an excellent summary on the formation, challenges, and evolution of such academies and drawing schools in London, see Michael Kitson, “Hogarth’s Apology for Painters,” Volume of the Walpole Society 41 (1966): 46–111. According to Brian Allen, the genre of portraiture itself was also in transition in mid-1700s London, leaving behind the formal, idealizing style of baroque-era artists like Sir Peter Lely (1618–1680) and Sir Godfrey Kneller (1646–1723), which resulted in “numerous near-identical portraits,” and beginning the age of Sir Joshua Reynolds, which was marked by more individualized, psychological portraits. See Brian Allen, Francis Hayman (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), 45.

16. Brian Allen explores the important role of the St. Martin’s Lane Academy in disseminating French style in mid-eighteenth-century art; see Allen, Francis Hayman, 24–47. Philip Mercier (1689–1760) did not teach at the St. Martin’s Lane Academy but was friendly with its teachers; thus he was also able to exact his influence. English artists could also access French art through prints, and there were several notable private collections in London of French art, including those of Dr. Richard Mead and Sir James Thornhill.

17. Oppé, “Memoirs of Thomas Jones,” 73–74.

18. Smart provided financial support for Midgeley when he was abroad in India. See also Foskett, John Smart: The Man and His Miniatures, 11.

19. “The Berners Estate: Berners and Newman Streets,” ed. Philip Temple and Colin Thom, in Survey of London, vol. 52, South-East Marylebone, online edition (London: Bartlett School of Architecture, University of College London, 2017), 11, https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/architecture/sites/bartlett/files/chapter30_the_berners_estate.pdf. See also catalogue entry for John Smart, Portrait of Clement Winstanley, 1780, F65-41/21.

20. Foskett, John Smart: The Man and His Miniatures, 5–7.

21. Foskett noted that “at least two silver medals are known to exist, one engraved on the back ‘September 22, 1798.’ Several were struck in bronze, one in my own collection having ‘Sarah Neale’ engraved on the reverse, and at least one has come to my attention made of a silver alloy.” See Foskett, John Smart: The Man and His Miniatures, 8. Kirk also struck a profile medal of Sir Joshua Reynolds, dated 1773. For more on this art form and its history within British art, see Laurence A. Brown, A Catalogue of British Historical Medals 1760–1960: The Accession of George III to the Death of William IV (London: Seaby, 1980), nos. 1, 3, 30, 71, 82; and Christopher Eimer, The Pingo Family and Medal Making in 18th-Century Britain (London: British Art Metal Trust, 1998), nos. 16–19, 27.

22. See John Smart, George IV, when Prince of Wales, ca. 1783, watercolor on vellum, 2 1/4 x 2 in. (6 x 5.2 cm), Royal Collection Trust, RCIN 420663, https://www.rct.uk/collection/search#/2/collection/420663/george-iv-1762-1830-when-prince-of-wales.

On July 28, 1784, the portrait miniaturist John Smart, along with his fellow painters Ozias Humphry (1742–1810) and Francis Wheatley (1747–1801), received permission from the Honourable East India Company’s (HEIC) directors to depart for India “to follow [the] profession of painting.”¹ Smart and his oldest daughter, Anna Maria, sailed for Madras (now Chennai) on the Dutton on April 19, 1785.² While Smart had found success in London among patrons who praised the accuracy and polish of his highly finished pictures, by 1784 he decided to seek a new clientele in India. An examination of Smart’s connections to and time in India illuminates the part that he and his portrait miniatures played in the intricate framework of the HEIC’s colonial regime and its links to exploitation, trade, and cultural exchange and sheds light on the competitive network of British artists in India who were dependent on this dynamic for their livelihood.

Smart was hardly the first British artist to make this journey, one so common that it was figuratively described as “shaking the pagoda tree.” This was in reference to the gold coins, called pagodas, that were used for currency in southern India and were considered easy pickings by fortune-seekers who built tremendous wealth through the subjugation of the Indian subcontinent and its people.³ Mythical tales of vast and rapidly attained sums led to an influx of speculators and aspiring tycoons—and those who hoped to profit from them.⁴ By the 1760s, enterprising artists were beginning to make forays to India. In contrast to London, where artists were in competition for a limited number of patrons, India presented a fresh and potentially lucrative opportunity to make one’s name and fortune. The oil portraitist Tilly Kettle (1734–ca. 1786) was the first prominent artist to work in India, arriving in Madras in 1768.⁵ Other artists soon followed, including the painter Johann Zoffany (German, 1733–1810), who traveled to India in 1783, and the miniaturists Diana Hill (1755–1844) and Ozias Humphry, who both arrived in Calcutta in 1785. Humphry immediately marked Smart as a competitor and a threat even before his arrival in Madras.⁶

It is possible that Smart may have been enticed to travel to India not only by his fellow artists but also by his clients. Several miniatures in the Starr collection painted before the decade Smart spent in India feature sitters with close links to the subcontinent and to the HEIC in particular. As early as 1775, Smart painted Major William Davy, a renowned scholar of the Persian language who served in the Bengal Army and was the Persian Secretary to Warren Hastings, Governor General of Bengal. Davy sat for a portrait by Smart during a visit to England (Fig. 4). Smart then painted Andrew Majendie in 1766–69 (Fig. 5). Majendie had joined the HEIC in 1766 and was appointed Agent for Victualling the Troops and Clerk of the Treasury a decade later.⁷ Perhaps most influentially, in 1784, the year before Smart left for India, he painted John Wynch, who with his brothers had served in the Madras civil service since 1775 (Fig. 6). The Wynch family had close ties to India; Wynch’s father, Alexander Wynch, served as Governor of Madras from 1773 to 1775. Notably, nearly all these sitters spent some part of their careers in Madras.

As a miniaturist traveling abroad, Smart had an advantage over oil painters like Zoffany, as not only his artworks but his materials themselves were quite portable. In 1731, Robert Boyle’s treatise The Art of Drawing had instructed readers on how to create their own pocket-sized ivory pigment case, “about the bigness of a snuff box,” tiny but large enough to hold thirty-two pigments, brushes, India ink, and the powdered gum arabic used as a pigment binder.⁸ By the end of the eighteenth century, miniaturists could travel equipped with all they needed in a carrying case that could even serve as an easel. Such kits, like the tiny paintbox that belonged to Smart’s fellow miniaturist George Engleheart (1750–1829), were readily available from colormen’s shops.⁹

Another advantage was that some of the miniaturist’s materials—the most important, in fact—could be replenished in India. Although Smart used paper for sketches and some of his finished miniature portraits, most of the miniatures Smart completed in India—and his oeuvre in general—were painted on ivory. One of the two main centers for ivory-carving in India was near Smart’s main outpost of Madras. By the late eighteenth century, ivory supports were standard for British portrait miniatures and were sourced either from West Africa, where the ivory trade was indelibly linked to the slave trade, or from India, commonly from the tusks of Asian elephants.¹⁰ The market for ivory—and therefore for miniatures, which depended on its availability—thus cannot be separated from the dynamic of colonial oppression and plunder carried out by the HEIC and the British government’s policy in India.

Indeed, Kate Smith has argued that, in the case of ivory furniture, “contemporaries in Britain understood that [it] represented a family’s link to the subcontinent and more particularly signaled the gains of an [HEIC] career.”¹¹ Artists had to seek approval from the HEIC’s board of directors to practice their craft in India, and the directors were keenly aware of how images of the tightly controlled colony and its residents would be viewed back in Britain. Moreover, it is reasonable to assume that the company—founded in 1600 for the express purpose of monopolizing the trade of Indian luxury goods and commodities, including silk, cotton, tea, spices, opium, and of course ivory—approved of and even encouraged the practice of miniatures painted on ivory, to further its lucrative market.¹²

Nevertheless, the market for miniature portraits in India was still a limited one, constrained by the small communities of British expatriates in the three primary settlements of Bombay (modern-day Mumbai), Calcutta (Kolkata) and Madras (Chennai). When rumors of Smart’s impending arrival in India reached Humphry in Calcutta, the latter worked himself up into an anticipatory frenzy, imagining the wealth he had envisioned for himself going to his rival instead. Frantic letters to his brother and Mary Boydell, whom Humphry hoped to marry, reveal that he encouraged Boydell to delay Smart’s stay in London for as long as possible by coaxing her and her friends to be painted by Smart. He made his motivations explicit, writing: “I shall omit nothing that is in my favour to do to get money.”¹³ Alas, Humphry’s hope that Smart would be kept busy enough with new clients to delay his trip to India did not materialize.¹⁴

On September 6, 1785, John Smart and his daughter Anna Maria arrived in Madras, a key strategic base for the HEIC. They took lodgings in North Street, Fort George, which was lined with fashionable Georgian-style buildings designed to appeal to a homesick—and imperialist—British population.¹⁵ Beyond Humphry’s account, very little is known about Smart’s decade in India. George C. Williamson tantalizingly cites an unlocated letter by a Miss Dalling describing Smart’s activities in India, but this was discounted by scholar Daphne Foskett, as the dates of their respective stays in India do not align.¹⁶ To Humphry’s relief, Smart spent most of his stay in Madras, although a newspaper reported in 1789 that “Smart, the predecessor of Bowyer, has painted everybody at Bombay, and is gone to Bengal.”¹⁷

While there is no known record of Smart’s transactions in India—or elsewhere—he seems to have found work quickly, judging by several miniatures dated to 1785 utilizing the trademark “I” in his signature that signifies a portrait painted in India.¹⁸ The earliest Smart miniature painted in India at the Nelson-Atkins dates to the following year, 1786, and depicts a young woman dressed for the hot Indian climate in a ruffled white dress, a blue-trimmed white surcoat, and a veil (Fig. 7). Such light, gauzy gowns in white and pastel hues were a hallmark of his India miniatures, as were the men’s HEIC uniforms, the inscribed “I,” and the frequently flushed and sunburned cheeks of his sitters, who were accustomed to the more temperate British weather. His use of neutral-toned or sky backgrounds was largely unchanged from his British miniatures, aside from a greater inclination to paint more gray-hued sky backgrounds than solid backgrounds in India. Like the newly built Georgian towns and country houses in which Smart’s patrons lived, self-contained and often barricaded from the surrounding Indian landscape, their depictions aligned with the traditional features of British portraiture, in which the landscape—so closely tied to remnants of feudalism—was inseparable from notions of British identity and supremacy.

In about 1788, a newspaper extolled,

“Mr. Smart is in such deserved estimation in the East Indies that no other miniature painter can meet encouragement; he is still at Madras, but his presence at Calcutta and Lucknow is so earnestly courted that none of the Chiefs will submit to be painted by any other artist.”¹⁹

Such publicity likely helped connect Smart to profitable commissions, but familial connections, particularly in the close-knit community of British expatriates, also played a significant role. In 1786, he painted a miniature of Mrs. John Chamier (née Georgiana Grace Burnaby), which must have been well received; the following year, Smart painted her sister Charlotte Porcher and Charlotte’s new husband, Josias Du Pré Porcher, most likely to commemorate their marriage on November 1, 1787 (Figs. 8, 9).²⁰ Porcher was a native of Charleston, South Carolina, who had moved to England and later to Madras to follow his uncle Josias Du Pré into the leadership of the HEIC. Charlotte Porcher was apparently pleased enough with this pair of miniatures, now at the Nelson-Atkins, to commission another rendering of herself from Smart in 1788.²¹ The Burnaby sisters’ patronage of Smart continued in 1794, when he painted two miniatures of Mrs. Harriet Richardson (née Harriet Emma Burnaby) and her husband, Lieutenant General John Richardson.²² These miniatures most likely inspired other commissions from the Burnaby sisters’ friends and family in India.

Smart’s network reached even loftier heights with the august patronage of Muhammad Ali Khan Wallajah, Nawab of Arcot and the Carnatic, whose portrait Smart painted in 1788 (Fig. 10). Unlike his fellow ruler, Tipu Sultan—whose fierce antagonism toward the British is fascinatingly encapsulated in Tippoo’s Tiger, a nearly life-size wooden automaton of a tiger devouring British soldier Hugh Munrow²³—Ali was a close ally of the HEIC and one of the earliest and most active Indian patrons of British artists. He was also, unfortunately, notorious for not paying them for their work. Smart painted at least twelve known portraits of Ali during his stay in India, comprising a remarkable document of the ruler and the man. In 1805, Smart filed a lawsuit against Ali’s estate; the nawab had died a decade earlier, leaving about 11,000 pounds unpaid to the artist.²⁴

With the exception of Ali’s undependable patronage, there was not much of a market for portraits of Indian rulers by British artists. Their biggest source of income came from their fellow Britons, who sought to wield their newfound wealth to establish a quasi-aristocratic standard of living as similar as possible to that of England. Indeed, Humphry complained that his demanding patrons in Calcutta “require[d] as much as they would in London and more.”²⁵ Having one’s portrait painted by a fashionable artist was a crucial component of such a lifestyle. Portrait miniatures were particularly well suited to such commissions, as their typically small size enabled them to be transported more easily back to Britain as keepsakes for faraway loved ones.

For this reason, miniatures were popular among military and particularly naval officers who served with the HEIC.²⁶ Beyond the occupational risks of serving in a colonial army, the difficulties of adapting to a comparatively harsh climate and the threat of tropical illnesses made the commissioning of portraits all the more urgent. The high mortality rate for soldiers and civilians alike meant that those with the means to send their likenesses home did not dawdle in doing so; the smaller and more affordable the better. This did not exclude more significant official commissions, however. In 1792, Smart painted Lieutenant General Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis, who had been appointed Commander-in-Chief of British India and Governor of the Presidency of Fort William in February 1786 (Fig. 11).

Upon arriving in India, Cornwallis—driven to redeem himself after the failure of the American Revolution—swiftly established polices that were instrumental in laying the groundwork for the British Raj and consolidating British control over India. Cornwallis’s actions were founded on pervasive stereotypes that Indians were uncivilized, childlike, and corrupt, prejudices that supported the aims of the HEIC for centuries. Cornwallis’s practices translated to paternalistic policies that sought to Anglicize India in the name of “progress” and “stability.”²⁷ Thus, in painting a British colonial leader like Cornwallis, Smart, a hardworking artist who was not particular about his patrons, could also be seen to be complicit in the system of oppression that underpinned his work in India. In his nine known miniatures of Cornwallis, including the Nelson-Atkins portrait painted in 1792, the year Cornwallis signed a celebrated treaty with the Nawab of Arcot, Smart depicts his subject as a paradigm of stability and “civilization.” His appearance hardly changing over the eight years in which the miniatures were painted, enabling us to view this series as a form of propaganda. Smart’s Cornwallis is dignified, stern, and lavishly uniformed in the red coat that defined the power and imperialism of the British military in India.

As tools of colonialism, portrait miniatures were employed for what Elizabeth Maddock Dillon has called “intimate distance”²⁸—as Madeline Zehnder puts it, “a social configuration that depends on asserting closeness with geographically distributed white populations while disavowing intimacy with physically present Black and Indigenous peoples.”²⁹ These physically tangible, closely held artworks and their owners circled back and forth between Britain and its colonies not only as reminders of absent loved ones but also as portable, wearable manifestations of England’s imperial might.

Despite Smart’s seemingly healthy number of commissions, by 1795, reality had impinged on the mythical promise of wealth in India, and he booked his voyage home to England. As William Foster explained, British artists in India soon “discovered that although the general scale of remuneration might be higher than at home, expenses were also very high; that the market, at the best of times, was a limited one; and that the Indian princes, though ready enough to give commissions at lucrative rates, were bad paymasters.”³⁰ Nevertheless, Smart’s ties to India followed him to London after he departed Madras on the Melville Castle on April 27, 1795.³¹ Smart’s strikingly composed 1806 portrait of John Holland (Fig. 12) is a sequel to a portrait he had painted of the same man in India in 1795.³² Ousted from his role as Governor of Madras for his corrupt activities, Holland was a casualty of the anti-corruption campaign of another Smart sitter, General Charles Cornwallis. While in the 1795 portrait Holland faces the viewer head on, in 1806 Smart posed him looking to the side, a positioning he seldom used, with the exception of one of his own self-portraits (Fig. 13). In 1810, Smart also painted then-Colonel Keith MacAlister, who had a distinguished service record as a commanding officer of the Madras Cavalry and wrote an account of the negotiations between Tipu Sultan and the HEIC (Fig. 14).

Widely considered to be his finest body of work, John Smart’s refined and keenly observed Indian miniatures also bear witness to, and take part in, the complex and deeply exploitative role of Britain and the Honourable East India Company in India, the impact of which continues to reverberate today. These palm-sized portraits were portable symbols of love and intimacy, but they were also tools in the service of colonial image making. Their size, portability, and the very act of their production—painted on wafers of elephant ivory obtained through violence and exploitation—speak to portrait miniatures’ integral connections to British colonial networks. The tendency of ivory miniatures to curl and cockle at the sides, however, pushes against the grain of this dominant narrative. These tiny slices of ivory, cut centuries ago from the tusks of elephants, are still trying to return to their original form.³³

Notes

1. In a letter dated December 19, 1787, from Madras, Smart wrote, “Sir, The order of the Company of April 1777 requiring everyone to give their names who do not belong to the Company and he means by which they come to India really totally slipt my memory. I therefore now inform you I had the Court of Directors full assent to come out to follow my profession of painting and to bring my daughter with me.” Quoted in Daphne Foskett, John Smart: The Man and His Miniatures (London: Cory, Adams, and Mackay, 1964), 13–14.

2. Foskett, John Smart, 14. To occupy himself and his fellow travelers on board, Smart made a number of charming portrait sketches of the Dutton’s crew and passengers, and he did the same later during his return voyage on the Melville Castle. These shipboard drawings are distinguished from his otherwise highly refined body of work for their freer handling and animated, spontaneous compositions. See, for example, John Smart, Portrait of Sir Captain West of the Dutton Indiaman, 1785, watercolor over traces of black chalk, with metallic gold paint on laid paper, 6 7/16 x 6 in. (16.4 x 15.2 cm), Cleveland Museum of Art, 1997.79, https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1997.79.

3. David Gilmour, The British in India: A Social History of the Raj (New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 2018), 23.

4. The actual potential for profit decreased as the years went on, and reports of the sums to be gained were often highly exaggerated. Sudipta Sen, “Rebellion of the Puppet Nabob: Mir Qasim’s Desperate Campaign against the East India Company,” in Robert A. Olwell, ed., Envisioning Empire: The New British World from 1763 to 1773 (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019), 129.

5. Michael J. Franklin, Romantic Representations of British India (New York: Routledge, 2006), 87.

6. Mildred Archer, India and British Portraiture (Totowa, NJ: Sotheby Parke-Bernet, 1979), 200.

7. Henry Davidson Love, Indian Records Series: Vestiges of Old Madras (New Delhi: Mittal Publications, 1913), 3:188.

8. Robert Boyle, The Art of Drawing and Painting in Water-Colours (London: J. Peele, 1732), 66–67. The second edition, dated 1732, is cited due to availability, but Boyle’s text was first published in 1731.

9. Winsor and Newton, Paintbox, 18th century, metal box, 5 11/16 x 2 13/16 x 7/8 in. (14.5 x 7.1 x 2.3 cm), Victoria and Albert Museum, London, P.16-1925, https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1043181/paintbox-winsor–newton.

10. Belied by Smart’s fluidly painted miniatures, oily ivory is not an intuitive support for watercolor. It had taken the better part of the century for miniaturists to perfect the technique. They attempted ironing the ivory, scouring it with sandpaper and bone, and smearing it with concoctions of garlic and vinegar to prepare it to accept the soluble medium.

11. Kate Smith, “The Afterlife of Objects: Anglo-Indian Ivory Furniture in Britain,” East India Company at Home, 1757–1857 (blog), October 20, 2016, University College London, https://cpb-eu-w2.wpmucdn.com/blogs.ucl.ac.uk/dist/1/251/files/2014/07/Ivory-Furniture-PDF-final-19.08.14.pdf .

12. On the history of the Honourable East India Company, see William Dalrymple, The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire (New York: Bloomsbury, 2019).

13. Humphry Papers HU/3/23, Royal Academy Library, London. This correspondence is discussed in Foskett, John Smart, ­14–15.

14. Indeed, Humphry’s wheedling letters full of complaints and jealous schemes may have played no small part in leading his fiancée to break off their engagement altogether. The vagaries of their courtship and correspondence are related in George C. Williamson, Life and Works of Ozias Humphry, R.A. (London: John Lane, 1918), 123–38.

15. William Orme, after Francis Swain Ward, A View In The North Street Of Fort St. George, 1804, aquatint, 12 1/2 x 17 5/16 in. (32 x 44 cm), British Library, London.

16. Foskett, John Smart, 19.

17. London World, April 10, 1789, 3.

18. For example, John Smart, Portrait Miniature of a Lady, 1785, 2 1/8 in. (5.4 cm) high, formerly with Philip Mould, https://philipmould.com/artists/93-john-smart/works/3678-john-smart-portrait-miniature-of-a-lady-wearing-fur-bordered-mauve-1785/.

19. Basil S. Long, “John Smart, Miniature Painter,” The Connoisseur 73 (September–December 1925): 198.

20. John Smart, Mrs. John Chamier (née Georgiana Grace Burnaby), 1786, watercolor on ivory, 2 3/16 in. (5.6 cm), sold at Christie’s, London, “Important Gold Boxes, Objects of Vertu, and Portrait Miniatures,” May 24, 2004, lot 131, https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-4280921.

21. John Smart, Charlotte Porcher, née Burnaby, 1788, watercolor on ivory, 2 1/4 in. (5.7 cm), sold at Christie’s, London, “Centuries of Style, Silver, European Ceramics, Portrait Miniatures, and Gold Boxes,” November 26, 2013, lot 165, https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-5743532.

22. John Smart, Mrs. John Richardson, née Harriet Emma Burnaby, 1794, watercolor on ivory, 3 in. (7.6 cm), sold at Christie’s, London, “Centuries of Style: Silver, European Ceramics, Portrait Miniatures, and Gold Boxes,” November 27, 2012, lot 402, https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-5628539; John Smart, Lieutenant General John Richardson (d. 1828), 1794, watercolor on ivory, 2 15/16 in. (7.5 cm), “Important Gold Boxes, Objects of Vertu, and Portrait Miniatures,” May 24, 2004, lot 129, https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-4280919.

23. Tippoo’s Tiger, ca. 1790, painted wood with metal fixtures, 70 x 28 x 24 in. (178 x 71 x 61 cm), Victoria and Albert Museum, London, https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/tipus-tiger.

24. Foskett, John Smart, 23. This amount includes 6 percent in interest, which Smart had charged to the nawab after over a decade of nonpayment. By no means a pittance, this is the equivalent of about 110,373.05 pounds in 2017, according to the National Archives’ Currency Converter. Natasha Eaton argues that the deferral of payment was a deliberate strategy on the part of the nawabs. Natasha Eaton, “Coercion and the Gift: Art, Jewels, and the Body in British Diplomacy in Colonial India,” in Global Gifts: The Material Culture of Diplomacy in Early Modern Eurasia, ed. Zoltán Biedermann, Anne Gerritsen, and Giorgio Riello (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 288.

25. Quoted in Archer, India and British Portraiture, 190.

26. See Maggie Keenan, “Dressing Smart: The Military Portraits of John Smart and John Smart Junior.” For more on the complex relationship between Britain’s military and the HEIC’s own naval fleet and vast private army, see T. A. Heathcote, The Military in British India: The Development of British Land Forces in South Asia, 1600–1947 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995).

27. Amal Chatterjee, Representations of India, 1740–1840: The Creation of India in the Colonial Imagination (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), 25. Per Chatterjee, “When setting out to clean up corruption, [Cornwallis] promptly replaced all Indians in high positions because he felt that ‘every native of Hindustan was corrupt. . . . He replaced native judges with English judges.’”

28. Elizabeth Maddock Dillon, New World Drama: The Performative Commons in the Atlantic World, 1649–1849 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014), 13–16.

29. Madeline Zehnder, “Colonial Relations in Miniature: Affective Networks, Race, and the Portrait in Victor Séjour’s ‘Le Mulâtre,’” American Literature 93, no. 2 (2021): 167–94.

30. William Foster, “British Artists in India 1760–1870,” Volume of the Walpole Society 19 (1930–31): 1.

31. Foskett, John Smart, 21.

32. John Smart, A Member of the Hollond [sic] Family, 1795, watercolor on ivory, 2 5/8 in. (6.5 cm), sold at Bonhams, London, “Fine Portrait Miniatures,” November 19, 2014, lot 91. John Holland’s name is commonly spelled with an “a” in the historical record. According to the sale listing, “Whilst there is no mention of a Mr Hollond [sic] in Daphne Foskett’s book, John Smart: The Man and His Miniatures (1964), a ‘Miss Holland, afterwards Mrs Crawford,’ signed and dated 1799 and a ‘Mr Holland,’ signed and dated 1806 are listed and may be related to the present sitter given the vagaries of surname spelling during this period. There were many members of the Hollond family living in Madras at the time of the present lot’s conception.” It is possible that the Nelson-Atkins miniature of Mr. Holland, dated 1806, was also based on another earlier portrait, due to the style of his clothing and particularly his visibly powdered hair.

33. These concluding thoughts sprang from observations made by William Rudolph, NAMA Director of Curatorial Affairs, on this subject, which still preoccupy me over two years later.

John Smart spent a blistering ten years in India (1785–1795), where he captured many of the sunburnt officers of the Honourable East India Company (HEIC) and their wives, along with members of the local government. These connections made abroad paved the way for his return to England in the winter of 1795, where he was in high demand.¹ As demonstrated throughout this volume, Smart was a savvy businessman, always thinking ahead about networking and self-promotion. He understood the power of portraiture as a means of crafting one’s identity and recognized it as a lucrative business venture. On his return to England, he capitalized on these aspects of his trade with renewed energy—charging higher rates, experimenting with new business models, and creating a new form of portrait, while also training his son to continue his legacy.

However, the England he returned to was not the same as the one he had left in 1785. The period between 1793 and 1802, known as “The Years of Endurance,” was marked by the looming threat of Napoleonic invasion, prompting the formation of volunteer units for England’s defense.² In 1798, Smart, along with several other artists, including his friends Robert Smirke (1780–1867) and Samuel Foote (1720–1777), joined the St. Pancras Association Volunteers.³ Although these volunteer formations were sometimes mocked (Fig. 15), evidence suggests that both Smart and his son John Smart Junior (1777–1809) took their military involvement seriously.⁴

Smart’s engagement with the military was consistent throughout his artistic career. Some of his highest-profile sitters came from this sphere and helped to secure his legacy. Like many of his contemporaries, including painters in oil, Smart also considered the lucrative relationship between painter and printmaker, joining forces with other artisans to produce multiple images of marketable subjects. One such collaboration occurred with his former pupil and fellow miniaturist Robert Bowyer (1758–1834), a print dealer and publisher. Together, they planned to make commemorative prints of major military figures—one after Smart’s miniature of General Charles Cornwallis, another after John Wells, Rear-Admiral of the White, and another depicting the two sons of Tipu Sultan, an Indian ruler often at odds with the HEIC.⁵

The prints went unrealized; however, drawings of Cornwallis (Fig. 16) and individual portraits of the two sons, Abdul Khalik Sultan and Mooiz Ud Deen Sultaun, survive and were titled by Smart in the margins, indicative of their intended purpose to be realized in print for mass consumption (Figs. 17, 18). An advertisement in the Times, London, of February 24, 1794, attests to the deliberate positioning of these portraits as both exclusive and authoritative:

Mr. Bowyer begs leave to acquaint the Public, that Mr. Smart, the Miniature Painter at Madras, has committed to his care the Portraits abovementioned, in order that Engravings may be made from them; and Mr. Smart has authorized Mr. Bowyer to say that the Princes were not permitted to sit to any other Artist than himself; so that no authentic likenesses can possibly be procured, but those that are done from the Pictures by Mr. Smart. The Portrait of the Marquis Cornwallis is engraving [sic] by Mr. Hall, and those of the Princes by Mr. Sharp.⁶

This advertisement highlights Smart’s strategic approach to legacy-building⁷ and his calculated approach to establishing himself as the sole arbiter of authenticity. By underscoring the uniqueness of his access to the young princes and leveraging that exclusivity in a public forum, Smart emerges (along with Bowyer) as a master marketer, adept at cultivating interest and demand for his work while reinforcing his reputation as a major artist of the day.⁸ Moreover, Smart’s venture into printmaking illustrates his forward-thinking approach to broadening his audience. This engagement with mass media was not just a business strategy but a deliberate attempt to ensure his artistic legacy in an era when visual culture was becoming increasingly public and pervasive.

Smart was always thinking of new ways to market himself, and this extended to his later forays into producing larger, more affordable finished drawings. Smart initially used these drawings as preparatory sketches for his highly detailed portrait miniatures, such as the museum’s preparatory sketch and finished miniature of Mr. Alexander James Dallas. These drawings often included the names of the sitters on their reverse, and thus they served a practical purpose—allowing Smart to recall the identity of sitters if a later commission arose. But their raw, unfinished quality also later captivated collectors, who eagerly acquired them when they surfaced on the art market in the 1930s.

During this later period of his career, Smart pioneered a new format known as “cabinet drawings.” These larger, finished works on paper offered his clients a cheaper yet sizable alternative to his miniatures on ivory.⁹ One striking example is Smart’s 1805 portrait of his close friend James Fittler, Marine Engraver to King George III. This portrait, which positions Fittler against a fully realized landscape, was likely created as a gift to the sitter, based on the extended inscription marking it as a work of personal significance. Smart’s experimentation with format was not merely a response to market pressures but also part of a broader strategy to align his artistry with the evolving tastes of his clientele. In offering a spectrum of products—cabinet drawings, prints after well-known sitters, and ivory miniatures—Smart ensured his appeal to a diverse audience, solidifying his reputation as an artist of exceptional skill and a masterful entrepreneur.

Drawing had always been a significant part of Smart’s artistic process, but it became even more integral as he sought to ensure his legacy. On his return to England, he dedicated time to teaching his son John Smart Junior to draw, laying the foundation for what he hoped would become the cornerstone of his son’s career as a miniature painter. Among the most telling examples of this training is a portrait after Hans Holbein the Younger’s Sir Henry Guildford realized by Smart Junior in 1798, now held in the Nelson-Atkins collection.¹⁰ Holbein (German, 1497/8–1543), widely regarded as a master of portraiture and drawing, had been re-evaluated in Smart’s lifetime as a touchstone for precision and artistic integrity.¹¹ By introducing his son to Holbein’s works, Smart tied his family’s artistic identity to this esteemed lineage (in fact, Hans Holbein the Elder [1460–1524] taught his own son the rudiments of drawing), aligning their practice with a tradition that balanced realism, craftsmanship, and cultural relevance.¹² This dedication to Holbein underscores Smart’s deliberate effort to secure not only his son’s future but also his own place in the continuum of portraiture. Tragically, this effort was cut short when Smart Junior left for India in September 1808,¹³ only to pass away four months later, bringing an abrupt end to the family legacy that Smart Senior had so carefully nurtured.¹⁴ Unlike many of Smart’s contemporaries who aligned their practices with the Royal Academy or courtly patronage, Smart sought to establish his name through the continuation of his craft within his family. This deeply personal approach to legacy-building underscores his belief in the enduring value of his art.

Despite personal losses, Smart flourished professionally. In 1798, the painter and diarist Joseph Farington (1747–1821) noted that Smart was charging twenty-five guineas for his portrait miniatures and earning an annual income ranging from five hundred to six hundred pounds.¹⁵ This placed Smart on par with Richard Cosway, who by 1780 was known to charge between twenty and thirty guineas per miniature. For comparison, fellow miniaturist George Engleheart charged between twelve and fifteen guineas for his portrait miniatures.¹⁶ Smart’s financial success was mirrored by his generosity toward his family, ensuring that his daughter Sarah was well provided for on his marriage to his third and final wife, Mary Morton (1783–1851), on Valentine’s Day in 1805.¹⁷

Although Smart suffered from “uneasiness of mind” in his later years, likely prompted in part by the untimely death of John Smart Junior, he continued to paint until his death.¹⁸ In February 1811, three months before his death, he completed what may have been his final work: a meticulously rendered drawing of a Mr. Blackburne, signed and dated with unusual completeness, perhaps signifying its personal importance. Smart passed away on May 1, 1811, after a brief illness. His obituary in The Gentleman’s Magazine praised his remarkable likenesses, and his family monument bore an inscription that reads, in part: “Oh Smart in thy works the world will ever see / How great the loss of Art in losing thee.”¹⁹

In the end, John Smart’s career was a testament to his adaptability and vision. From his innovative approaches to portraiture and printmaking and his mentorship of the next generation, Smart demonstrated a remarkable ability to navigate the changing dynamics of the art world. His ability to balance exclusivity with accessibility ensured that his work resonated with both elite and emerging audiences. In a period defined by social upheaval and artistic innovation, Smart’s work stands as bridge between tradition and modernity, reflecting a legacy of resilience, creativity, and enduring impact.

Notes

1. For Smart’s network of patronage and the clever way he built his network in India, see Blythe Sobol, “Colonialism in Miniature: John Smart in India, 1785–1795,” above. Smart returned to England aboard the Melville Castle, which arrived in St. Helena on August 15. There he joined his daughter Anna Maria Woolf and her family, who accompanied him for the remainder of the voyage. Daphne Foskett, John Smart: The Man and His Miniatures (London: Cory, Adams, and Mackay, 1964), 21.

2. See Arthur Bryant, The Years of Endurance, 1793–1802 (London: Reprint Society, 1944).

3. The London Gazette, August 23, 1803, 1102. Richard (1772–1857) and George (ca. 1782–1850) Twining were also in the infantry. Smart Senior painted numerous miniatures of the Twining family. Foskett, John Smart: The Man and His Miniatures, 22.

4. As outlined by Starr Research Assistant Maggie Keenan in her biography for John Smart Junior, John Smart and John Smart Junior developed a musket that they introduced to the Board of Ordnance in 1806, capable of executing one thousand men.

5. In Joseph Farington’s diary, he mentions Smirke and Bowyer’s plan to issue a series of prints commemorating naval officers. The plan was modeled after David Hume’s The History of England, a subscription publication containing engraved portraits of illustrious sitters after works by artists including Robert Smirke and Robert Bowyer. Bowyer had a share in the profits. Farington outlines this in his letters introducing Boywer to various military figures. See letters dated Wednesday, July 16, 1794, and Thursday, July 17, 1794, in The Diary of Joseph Farington, ed. Kenneth Garlick and Angus MacIntyre (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), 1:214–15.

6. See The Times, London, February 24, 1794, 1. I am grateful to Blythe Sobol for sharing this reference and to Maggie Keenan for her research on the familial connection between Bowyer and Smart.

7. Several military portraits by John Smart were also reproduced in The Naval Chronicle, a serial publication of British maritime and military history published between 1799 and 1818 by John William Bunney and Joyce Gold. It remains speculative, however, whether Smart consented to his images being reproduced and published therein.

8. Smart and Bowyer followed a well-established tradition of producing print series featuring prominent figures. Bowyer notably contributed to other projects, such as the illustrations for Hume’s The History of England. These prints, based on artworks commissioned by Bowyer and displayed in his Historic Gallery at 82 Pall Mall, echoed the model set by contemporary ventures like the Boydell Shakespeare Gallery, Thomas Macklin’s Gallery of the Poets, and Henry Fuseli’s (Swiss, 1741–1825) Milton Gallery—all of which combined exhibitions with print sales in Pall Mall during the same period.

9. Lindsay Stainton suggests that, in Smart’s development and creation of larger, finished cabinet miniatures, he may have been “influenced by contemporary French portrait drawings and engravings” and that the works show “his ability to adapt his style to the neoclassical sensibilities of the period.” See Lindsay Stainton, “John Smart: The Draughtsman,” in Emma Rutherford and Lawrence Hendra, John Smart: A Genius Magnified, exh. cat. (London: Philip Mould Gallery, 2014), 106.

10. A group of ten drawings by John Smart Junior after portraits by Holbein at Windsor Castle are known. These were formerly in the collection of Daphne Foskett. See Foskett, John Smart: The Man and His Miniatures, 60. While Stainton identifies Smart Senior as the author of the drawing in Kansas City because of its merit, the present author and Starr Research Assistant Maggie Keenan believe it to be firmly by John Smart Junior’s hand. See Stainton, “John Smart: The Draughtsman,” 106n14.

11. Horace Walpole championed Holbein as a master and hung his neo-Gothic house at Strawberry Hill with copies after Holbein in a room dedicated to the artist. See Oskar Bätschmann and Pascal Griener, Hans Holbein, rev. ed. (London: Reaktion, 2014), 208–9.

12. For more on Holbein’s importance in his own period and his impact on subsequent generations of artists, see Roy Strong, Holbein: The Complete Paintings (London: Granada, 1980), 8–9. See also Anne T. Woollett, ed., Holbein: Capturing Character (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2021).

13. Smart Junior landed at Fort St. George on February 11, 1809. According to Smart’s bank accounts with Messrs Coutts and Co., Smart Senior paid £210 to Captain H. P. Tremenheere of the ship Asia for his son’s passage to India; see Foskett, John Smart: The Man and His Miniatures, 56n2. The Madras Almanac for the year 1810 cites Smart Junior’s arrival as February 11, 1809; cited in Foskett, John Smart: The Man and His Miniatures, 56.

14. “MADRAS DEATHS. On Friday morning, John Smart, Esq, Miniature Painter,” Madras Courier, June 7, 1809, 1. According to Foskett, “The entry in the Register of Burials at St Mary’s Church, Fort St George, gives the date of death as 1 June 1809”; Foskett, John Smart: The Man and His Miniatures, 57.

15. See the entry for July 28, 1798, in Farington, Diary of Joseph Farington (ed. Garlick and MacIntyre), 3:1040.

16. George C. Williamson, George Engleheart, 1750–1829, Miniature Painter to George III (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1902), 39.

17. From around 1806, according to Farington, Smart “settled £100 a year upon his daughter [Sarah], who has retired from His House, & left Him to live with His young wife who seems to be a well disposed woman & Has brought Him to habits of regularity in attending divine service.” Letter dated February 11, 1810, in Joseph Farington, The Diary of Joseph Farington, ed. James Grieg (London: Hutchinson, 1922?–1928), 6:10, cited in Foskett, John Smart: The Man and His Miniatures, 23n2.

18. On August 5, 1809, Smart met with Joseph Farington and told him he had not been well and that he was suffering from uneasiness of mind. Certainly, the untimely death of his son played a large role in Smart Senior’s outlook. He told Farington that his health was improving, though, and that he had been advised to take a seaside holiday. Entry for August 4, 1809, in Farington, Diary of Joseph Farington (ed. Grieg), 5:217, cited in Foskett, John Smart: The Man and His Miniatures, 25.

19. As cited in Foskett, John Smart: The Man and His Miniatures, 27.