Richard Crosse, Portrait of a Man, ca. 1765

Chicago:

Maggie Keenan, “Richard Crosse, Portrait of a Man, ca. 1765,” catalogue entry 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. 2, ed.Aimee Marcereau DeGalan (Kansas City: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024), https://doi.org/10.37764/8322.5.1350.

MLA:

Keenan, Maggie. “Richard Crosse, Portrait of a Man, ca. 1765,” catalogue entry. 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. 2, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024. doi: 10.37764/8322.5.1350.

See the artist’s biography in volume 4.

Richard Crosse painted this closely cropped miniature of an unknown man with piercing blue eyes around 1765. The sitter wears a scalloped lace collar with a deep blue silk doublet, slashed to reveal an inner white linen lining.¹ On his right shoulder is a cloak secured by a pearl-encrusted pin.

This type of costume is styled after garments popularized through portraits by the Flemish painter Sir Anthony Van Dyck (1599–1641), who resided in England during the early 1600s, when he served as court painter to King Charles I.² Approximately 145 years later, British society adopted Van Dyck dress for masquerades, or costume balls.³ The “Van Dyck costume”—most famously depicted by English artist Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788) in his painting Blue Boy (1770; Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, CA), which is nearly contemporaneous to this miniature—created a timeless appearance against the ever-changing fashions of eighteenth-century England and presented an allusion to the aristocratic and royal sitters whom Van Dyck portrayed.⁴

Richard Crosse began exhibiting miniatures at the Royal Society of Arts in London in 1760, and since he likely painted this miniature while the Van Dyck costume and unpowdered hair were still in fashion, this dates the portrait to circa 1765.⁵ The miniature exemplifies Crosse’s early style; the way the sitter’s mass of hair nearly disappears into the taupe background lacks the confident mark making of his later works.⁶ The flesh tints of this miniature have faded over time, resulting in a palette of muddy green, off-white, and pale blue.⁷ The unknown sitter’s fine clothing, and his ability to commission a miniature, suggest that he was a fashionable young man of means who wanted to project and preserve his status for posterity.⁸

Notes

1. See the chapter titled “Men’s 18th-Century Masquerade Dress Based on Van Dyck Dress” in Aileen Ribeiro, “The Dress Worn at Masquerades in England, 1730 to 1790, and its Relation to Fancy Dress in Portraiture” (PhD diss., University of London, 1975), 189, 192. Crosse painted at least two other men in this style of dress: Portrait of John Cobley, Esq., sold at Catalogue of Ancient and Modern Pictures and Drawings, the Property of C. P. Oates, Esq., Christie’s, London, March 3, 1922, lot 16; and Portrait Miniature of a Gentleman, ca. 1775, previously in the inventory of Philip Mould, London. For another example of Van Dyck dress within the Nelson-Atkins collection, see Samuel Cotes, Portrait of Master Grosvenor, Probably Richard Grosvenor, 1770. According to Ribeiro, George Romney’s portrait of George Granville, 2nd Marquis of Stafford, includes a lace collar that is similar in size to Crosse’s sitter’s collar and is “smaller than would be accurate.” The collar’s small size and lack of tassels, as well as the general simplicity of the sitter’s attire, may indicate an imagined costume.

2. Ribeiro, “The Dress Worn at Masquerades in England,” 200; Aileen Ribeiro, “Some Evidence of the Influence of the Dress of the Seventeenth Century on Costume in Eighteenth-Century Female Portraiture,” Burlington Magazine 119, no. 897 (December 1977): 834. Seen more often in portraits of women, this costume often included padded or slashed sleeves, ribbons, rosettes, lace collars and cuffs, and pearls.

3. Terry Castle, “Eros and Liberty at the English Masquerade, 1710–90,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 17, no. 2 (1983–1984): 159, 161; Jennifer Van Horn, “The Mask of Civility: Portraits of Colonial Women and the Transatlantic Masquerade,” American Art 23, no. 3 (2009): 17–18; Elizabeth Hutchinson, “‘The Dress of His Nation’: Romney’s Portrait of Joseph Brant,” Winterthur Portfolio 45, no. 2/3 (2011): 224; Ribeiro, “Some Evidence,” 837. Masquerades encouraged the reversal of sexual and social hierarchies. Individuals dressed as the opposite sex, in provocative attire, or in exoticized clothing appropriated from other nations, particularly of non-Western origin. For more information on the masquerade, see Ribeiro, “The Dress Worn at Masquerades in England.”

4. Valerie Hedquist, Class, Gender, and Sexuality in Thomas Gainsborough’s Blue Boy (New York: Routledge, 2020), 18–23; Aileen Ribeiro, Fashion and Fiction: Dress in Art and Literature in Stuart England (London: Yale University Press, 2005), 144–50. King Charles I held masques at court during the 1630s to subdue Puritans and distract from political and religious turmoil through a dramatic spectacle, and display his wisdom and power to the public. Van Dyck created similar virtuous ideals in his paintings of Charles, whom he represented, sumptuously dressed, as confident, dignified, and paternal.

5. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, “Lead White or Dead White? Dangerous Beauty Practices of Eighteenth-Century England,” Bulletin of the Detroit Institute of Arts 76, no. 1/2 (2002): 43–45; Basil Long, British Miniaturists (London: Holland Press, 1929), 109. Crosse was twenty-three years old in 1765. While Van Dyck dress remained in fashion through the end of the eighteenth century, the sitter’s hair in this miniature aligns with the 1760s, since the popularity of powdered hair reached its height by the 1770s.

6. Basil Long, “Richard Crosse, Miniaturist and Portrait-Painter,” Volume of the Walpole Society 17 (1928–1929): 64. Since Crosse never signed his work, it is difficult to track his stylistic progression definitively. His style resembles Richard Cosway’s but differs in Crosse’s use of green and brown against blue underpainting.

7. Daphne Foskett, “Richard Crosse,” in Miniatures: Dictionary and Guide (Woodbridge: Antique Collectors Club, 1987), 22, 378. Like those of Jeremiah Meyer, Crosse’s carmine pigments were fugitive, and most have diminished significantly.

8. While Crosse did not charge a monstrous amount for his miniatures, he also painted the royal family and aristocrats. For the full list of sitters included in Crosse’s ledger, see Long, “Richard Crosse,” 84–94.

Unknown owner, by 1949 [1];

Purchased from the unknown owner’s sale, Fine Sicilian Jewellery, Objects of Vertu, Fine Portrait Miniatures, Sotheby’s, London, October 27, 1949, lot 118, as A Man, by Leggatt Brothers, London, probably on behalf of Mr.Mr. John W. (1905–2000) and Mrs. Martha Jane (1906–2011) Starr, Kansas City, MO, by 1949–1958 [2];

Their gift to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1958.

Notes

[1] As noted in the Sotheby’s October 27, 1949, sale, “Other Properties” sold lots 70–126.

[2] The annotated catalogue for this sale is located at University of Missouri-Kansas City, Miller Nichols Library. The annotations are most likely by Mr. or Mrs. Starr. Lot 118 is annotated in pencil with a checkmark and a circled lot number. “Leggatt” and “15” is written in pen directly below the lot. An attached price list confirms Leggatt purchased lot 118 for £15. The other miniature in lot 118, A Lady by Nathaniel Hone, is also now part of the Starr Collection; see F58-60/73. Archival research indicates that the Starrs purchased many miniatures from Leggatt Brothers, either directly or with Leggatt acting as their purchasing agent.

Catalogue of Fine Sicilian Jewellery, Objects of Vertu, Fine Portrait Miniatures (London: Sotheby’s, October 27, 1949), lot 118, as A Man.

Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 57, p. 23, (repro.), as Unknown Man.