George Engleheart, Portrait of a Man, ca. 1790

Chicago:

Maggie Keenan, “George Engleheart, 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: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024), https://doi.org/10.37764/8322.5.1388.

MLA:

Keenan, Maggie. “George Engleheart, 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: 10.37764/8322.5.1388.

See the artist’s biography in volume 4.

The delicate, floriated pink and clear cut stone setting surrounding this miniature belies its rather jowly subject. If the case is original, the bracelet setting might suggest that the sitter’s wife wore the miniature on her wrist.¹ The case construction is virtually identical to that of Jeremiah Meyer’s Portrait of a Man, suggesting that Engleheart and Meyer, who were friends, colleagues, and neighbors, may also have shared a case maker.

The sitter appears in three-quarters profile, with only his right shoulder visible. He wears a striking cobalt-blue jacket with a turned-down collar. His collar, dusted in white, bears evidence of a recent trip to the hairdresser to powder his perfectly coiffed bag wig.² His facial features are distinctly Engleheart, with trademark pointed black eyebrows, wide-set eyes, and a firm, resolute mouth.

Engleheart treats the sitter’s coat and face differently. In the coat, the proof of Engleheart’s brushwork appears only in the collar’s gold trim. In the face, however, one sees brushstrokes in various shades of peach that follow the topography of the man’s visage: curving along the edge of his jowls and running vertically near his nose. This peachy mark making evokes flesh that is vulnerable to aging, in contrast to the smooth surface of the coat.

Engleheart painted this miniature around 1790, based on the sitter’s powdered hair and jacket, a style that incorporates the double-breasted fashion of the 1780s and the large folded lapels of the 1790s.³ Likewise, the visible brushstrokes and vibrant colors align with works from the middle period of Engleheart’s career.⁴

Notes

1. Marcia Pointon, “‘Surrounded with Brilliants’: Miniature Portraits in Eighteenth-Century England,” Art Bulletin 83, no. 1 (2001): 51, 54, 59. In a 2018 conversation with conservator Carol Aiken, she noted that the bracelet clasp appears to be historic, but with modern additions of a pin and hanger to convert it to a brooch and necklace. We cannot be certain that the mount is original to the portrait, but it is a period case.

2. While the gold trim and buttons resemble the coat of a British naval officer, the lapels are missing the standard white facings. For an example by George Engleheart, see A Naval Officer Called Admiral Byron, watercolor on ivory, oval, 2 1/8 in. (5.4 cm) high, sold at “Fine Portrait Miniatures,” Bonhams, London, June 24, 2004, lot 62, https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/11052/lot/62/. The sitter’s side curls are simple, and black brushstrokes behind the sitter’s right ear suggest hair tied in back by a ribbon or a bag wig.

3. Michael Kwass, “A Wig History of Consumption in Eighteenth-Century France,” American Historical Review 111, no. 3 (2006): 647, 655. Wigs became more natural looking in the 1780s, and a 1795 tax eliminated the use of nearly all hair powder. An English wool coat in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (1790; T281-1991) has similar lapels; see http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O363063/coat-unknown.

4. V. Remington, “Engleheart, George (1750–1829),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 18:452.

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. 78, 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. 78, p. 29, (repro.), as Unknown Man.