Henry Edridge, Portrait of a Man, ca. 1790

Chicago:

Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, “Henry Edridge, Portrait of a Man, ca. 1790,” 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, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024), https://doi.org/10.37764/8322.5.1360.

MLA:

Marcereau DeGalan, Aimee. “Henry Edridge, Portrait of a Man, ca. 1790,” 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: 10.37764/8322.5.1360.

See the artist’s biography in volume 4.

In this portrait, Henry Edridge captures the likeness of an unidentified middle-aged man. The sitter is clad in a gold jacket with a chartreuse-striped vest and white cravat, set against a subtly modulated brown background. The traces of white powder on the man’s upper collar suggest he powdered his hair, a common practice of the era, contrasting with the darker brown shade of his eyebrows.

Edridge’s technique in rendering the man’s coat, with its rich color and textured paint application, particularly in the cravat, exhibits a fluidity reminiscent of Samuel Shelley (English, 1756–1808), suggesting a possible influence.¹ Both employ a highly gummed surface. Despite the absence of Edridge’s signature or a backing card,² the distinct hallmarks of his artistic style are discernable.

Interestingly, the sitter bears a slight resemblance to George Chalmers (Scottish, 1742–1825), a Scottish-born British colonial administrator, writer, and antiquarian whom Edridge sketched in watercolor in 1809 (Fig. 1). Both portraits share a distinctive close-cropped hairstyle with longer sides, although their eye colors differ: Chalmers with piercing blue eyes and the unidentified sitter with brown eyes. Nevertheless, Edridge renders their aging flesh in a similar manner, highlighting the hollows of their cheeks and eye sockets and the distinctive crease between the lower lip and chin. Although the identity of the Nelson-Atkins sitter remains unknown, Edridge’s likeness provides a lasting record for posterity.

Notes

1. See John Murdoch, Jim Murrell, Patrick J. Noon, and Roy Strong, The English Miniature (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), 194.

2. There are some remnants of adhesive on the verso of the miniature, indicating that a backing was removed at some point, which may have been inscribed. See conservation report in NAMA curatorial files.

Mr. John W. (1905–2000) and Mrs. Martha Jane (1906–2011) Starr, Kansas City, MO, by 1958;

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

The Starr Foundation Collection of Miniatures, The Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, December 8, 1972–January 14, 1973, no cat., no. 181, as Unknown Man.

Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 181, p. 62, (repro.), as Unknown Man.