George Engleheart, Portrait of a Boy, ca. 1785

Chicago:

Maggie Keenan, “George Engleheart, Portrait of a Boy, ca. 1785,” 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/10.37764/8322.5.1386.

MLA:

Keenan, Maggie. “George Engleheart, Portrait of a Boy, ca. 1785,” 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: 10.37764/8322.5.1386.

See the artist’s biography in volume 4.

In this portrait of a boy, George Engleheart captures the innocence of youth with a familiarity that comes from experience. Engleheart had four children of his own and was intimately aware of their idiosyncrasies.¹ Based on this portrait’s small size, bright colors, and linear brushstrokes in the hair, the work dates to the middle phase in Engleheart’s career (1780–1795).²

The young boy, likely between the ages of four and seven, wears a bright red skeleton suit, a style influenced by the Enlightenment philosophers John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who believed that restrictive clothing impeded growth.³ (The length and free-flowing quality of the boy’s popular hairstyle also accords with Rousseauian ideals.) The skeleton suit, so called because of the slender appearance it provided, was a three-piece garment consisting of loose-fitting trousers, a linen shirt with a large collar and muslin ruffles, and a jacket that buttoned onto the front of the trousers.⁴ The suit was in fashion between about 1780 and 1830 and was worn by boys from the time they were breeched, around age two to four, until approximately age eight.⁵

While the three-piece skeleton suit resembled men’s attire, the actual fit differed, providing comfort and movement for young boys. Another variant from menswear was the open collar, made all the more dramatic by its ruffles. This sartorial element uniquely contrasts with the restrictive, sober collars worn by men at this time.⁶ The width further specified the wearer’s age: whereas young boys, like this sitter, wore open collars, older boys typically wore tall and closely cropped collars.⁷ An example of this difference can be seen in a portrait by George Engleheart’s nephew, John Cox Dillman Engleheart (1784–1862), Portrait of James Temple Mansel. The collar of Mansel’s skeleton suit folds up around his face, in contrast to the wide-open collar of this younger sitter.

In Portrait of a Boy, the collar’s edges contain both opaque white highlights and dark gray in the shadows of its folds; its interior, however, is not well defined. A diagonal peach-colored line along the boy’s right side suggests where the collar may begin and extends parallel to the shadow in his neck, ultimately pointing toward a low neckline.⁸ The crimson-colored suit offers a dramatic contrast from the white ruffled collar and light background. The jacket includes a folded lapel and a single shiny gold button.⁹

While the boy’s eyebrows lack the thick black shape often seen in other portraits by Engleheart, a black line accentuates the tops of his eyes. In contrast, his lower eyelids are unarticulated. This effect intensifies the boy’s deep turquoise gaze, making his eyes appear larger and emphasizing his youthfulness. The sitter’s ruddy peach cheeks highlight his youthful glow. Engleheart portrays this sitter on the threshold of boyhood: a doe-eyed, rosy-cheeked boy with a confident gaze and a slight smile that suggest he knows something the viewer does not. It is probable that the boy’s mother or father commissioned the miniature and wore it as a sign of affection, permanently capturing their son’s fleetingly innocent age.¹⁰

Notes

1. For an exceptional example, see Engleheart’s portrait of his niece, Melicent Dillman Engleheart (1775–1796), watercolor on ivory, 3 1/2 in. (8.8 cm) high, in “The Collector: English Furniture, Works of Art and Portrait Miniatures,” Christie’s, London, May 22, 2019, lot 120.

2. Daphne Foskett, “John Cox Dillman Engleheart,” Miniatures: Dictionary and Guide (Woodbridge: Antique Collectors Club, 1987), 371.

3. Karin Calvert, “Children in American Family Portraiture, 1670 to 1810,” William and Mary Quarterly 39, no. 1 (January 1982): 105, 108; Katy Canales, “Skeleton Suits—The Enlightenment’s Onesie?” Victoria and Albert Museum of Childhood, May 20, 2016, https://www.vam.ac.uk/blog/museum-of-childhood/skeleton-suits-the-enlightenments-onesie. Prior to the age of four, boys and girls wore dresses. After four, boys’ clothing changed to trousers and jackets, referred to as the “breeching” stage, thus physically differentiating them from girls. This marked the passage from a child to an individual.

4. Canales, “Skeleton Suits.” Charles Dickens described a skeleton suit as “an ingenious contrivance for displaying the full symmetry of a boy’s figure, by fastening him into a very tight jacket, with an ornamental row of buttons over each shoulder, and then buttoning his trousers over it, so as to give his legs the appearance of being hooked on, just under the armpits”; see Charles Dickens, Sketches by Boz (London: Macmillan and Company, 1892), 69.

5. Jacqueline Reinier, “Breeching,” Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood: In History and Society, ed. Paula S. Fass (New York: Macmillan Reference, 2004), 118; Ruth Rubinstein, Society’s Child: Identity, Clothing, and Style (New York: Avalon Publishing, 2000), 62. The age at which young boys wore the skeleton suit is widely debated, but most agree it was worn between the ages of four and eleven. For a comparative image of a boy’s skeleton suit, see George Engleheart, Master Sparkes, watercolor on ivory, 2 7/8 in. (7.3 cm), “Centuries of Style: Silver, European Ceramics, Glass, Portrait Miniatures and Gold Boxes,” Christie’s, London, November 29, 2011, lot 123, https://www.artnet.com/artists/george-engleheart/master-sparkes-in-double-breasted-blue-coat-with-OYfntvtVc8J-MzRx4JRow2.

6. Jose Blanco F., ed., Clothing and Fashion: American Fashion from Head to Toe (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2016), 66.

7. Some have argued that younger boys wore collars with a more elaborate frill compared to older boys. By the time skeleton suits fell out of fashion in the 1830s, the shape of upper-class British boys’ collars began to reference their future attendance at Eton College. For more information on the Eton collar, see Valerie Cumming, C. W. Cunnington, and P. E. Cunnington, The Dictionary of Fashion History (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2010), 76.

8. The collar’s opening and exposed flesh may be interpreted as a way of sexualizing the young boy. John Hoppner’s Boy with a Bird’s Nest (The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, no. 1102, https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/id/object/3418) depicts a similarly low neckline. The plunging neckline could also be the result of a young boy quickly dressing himself and leaving the buttons of his skeleton suit undone.

9. Under a microscope, four gold dots appear within the button. Although additional buttons are not visible in the composition, skeleton suits usually featured at least two rows of buttons.

10. During a 2018 conversation with conservator Carol Aiken, she confirmed that the miniature’s case is likely not original.

Probably George J. Winner, by 1953 [1];

Purchased from his sale, Catalogue of Objects of Vertu, Portrait Miniatures, Watches, Gold Boxes, Etc., Sotheby’s, London, November 30, 1953, lot 98, as A Boy, by Leggatt Brothers, London, probably on behalf of Mr. John W. (1905–2000) and Mrs. Martha Jane (1906–2011) Starr, Kansas City, MO, 1953–1958 [2];

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

Notes

[1] G. J. Winner, Esq. is probably George Joseph Winner (1910–1975) of Kensington, England, and father of the famous film director, Michael Winner.

[2] An annotated catalogue for this sale is located at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, Miller Nichols Library. The annotations are most likely by Mr. or Mrs. Starr, with lot 98 circled, a slash, and “32.” According to the price list, Leggatt bought the miniature for £30. Archival research has shown that Leggatt Brothers served as purchasing agents for the Starrs. See correspondence between Betty Hogg and Martha Jane Starr, May 15 and June 3, 1950, Nelson-Atkins curatorial files.

The Starr Foundation Collection of Miniatures, The Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, December 8, 1972–January 14, 1973, no cat., no. 77, as Unknown Young Boy.

Catalogue of Objects of Vertu, Portrait Miniatures, Watches, Gold Boxes, Etc. (London: Sotheby’s, November 30, 1953), 12, as A Boy.

Martha Jane and John W. Starr, “Collecting Portrait Miniatures,” Antiques 80, no. 5 (November 1961): (repro.).

Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 77, p. 28, (repro.), as Unknown Young Boy.