Gervase Spencer, Portrait of a Royal Navy Captain, 1753

Chicago:

Maggie Keenan, “Gervase Spencer, Portrait of a Royal Navy Captain, 1753,” 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. 3, ed. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024), https://doi.org/10.37764/8322.5.1648.

MLA:

Keenan, Maggie. “Gervase Spencer, Portrait of a Royal Navy Captain, 1753,” 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. 3, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024. doi: 10.37764/8322.5.1648.

See the artist’s biography in volume 4.

Gervase Spencer’s enamel firing process preserves the bright gold and blue of this officer’s attire, an example of the first uniform issued by the Royal Navy in 1748. The uniform developed, in part, “out of a need to provide a clear visual definition of rank and status within the navy and to society at large.”¹ This portrait exemplifies that distinction, solidifying the sitter’s status as a high-ranking naval officer dressed in gold trimmings that proclaimed his station.

The sitter wears a wool coat with white facings, a vest edged in gold, a lace cravat, and gold buttons, aligning with 1748–67 Royal Navy uniform regulations.² The white lapels indicate a captain with at least three years’ seniority, a high rank for a sitter who seems relatively young.³ The sitter’s youthful appearance may be attributable to Spencer’s stylized rendering and to the fact that he typically did not work from life. Signed “GS” and dated 1753, the portrait was painted at a time of peace for Britain’s Royal Navy, and the navy did not typically promote officers during peacetime—suggesting that the sitter’s increase in rank occurred during the War of Austrian Succession, which ended in 1748.⁴

This captain, whose peacetime wages were only about fifteen shillings a month, must have come from substantial means in order to afford not only his uniform but also the costlier medium of enamel for his painted portrait.⁵ While Spencer’s fees remain unknown, he likely charged about ten guineas, as did his fellow enameller Jean André Rouquet (1701–1758).⁶ Enamel was a more durable medium than watercolor, and this high-ranking officer consciously selected it as a marker of wealth and legacy, knowing its brilliance would survive the length of any war.

Notes

1. Amy Miller, Dressed to Kill: British Naval Uniform, Masculinity and Contemporary Fashions, 1748–1857 (London: National Maritime Museum, 2007), 8.

2. The sitter bears some resemblance to Sir Charles Saunders (ca. 1715–1775), depicted in a mezzotint print after Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792), located at The British Museum, London, 1853,0112.1894, https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1853-0112-1894.

3. I would like to thank military uniform specialist Christopher Bryant, who in a December 6, 2019, conversation confirmed this sitter’s rank. See also Katherine Gazzard, “Portraiture and the British Naval Officer, 1739–1805” (PhD diss., University of East Anglia, 2009), 68, 220; and The Mariner’s Mirror, ed. Leonard Laughton, Roger Anderson, and William Perrin (London: Society for Nautical Research, 1965), 26. Captains were officially referred to as “post-captains” to differentiate them from “captains,” an informal term for any officer in command of a vessel. Captains with fewer than three years’ seniority wore blue lapels.

4. Douglas Hay, “War, Dearth and Theft in the Eighteenth Century: The Record of the English Courts,” Past & Present, no. 95 (May 1982): 124–26, 140–41; Nicholas Rodger, “Commissioned Officers’ Careers in the Royal Navy, 1690–1815,” Journal for Maritime Research 3, no. 1 (2001): 94–95, 98, 101. The Seven Years’ War did not begin for another three years, in 1756. The Royal Navy required six years of service and a minimum age of twenty before obtaining the rank of lieutenant, one rank below captain. This suggests that the captain depicted here had already served at least seven years, perhaps enlisting as a midshipman around the start of the War of Austrian Succession. Despite the peace that followed, this captain was part of a naval generation that lost a third of their total commissioned officers within twelve years of enlisting. This shockingly high mortality rate may be linked to England’s increase in crime and poverty after the war.

5. William Clowes, The Royal Navy: A History from the Earliest Time to the Present (London: Sampson Low, 1897), 235; Clive Wilkinson, The British Navy and the State in the Eighteenth Century (Suffolk: Boydell Press, National Maritime Museum, 2004), 53. Officers received half-pay when they were not actively employed; this was usually half of their typical pay at sea. In 1768, sailors were receiving around thirty shillings per month. According to a conversation on March 19–23, 2018, with conservator Carol Aiken, the gilt metal plate contains bracelet clasps on the top and bottom, notes in NAMA curatorial files.

6. Daphne Foskett, “Gervase Spencer,” Miniatures: Dictionary and Guide (Woodbridge: Antique Collectors Club, 1987), 184. Rouquet charged ten guineas for his miniatures in 1739, in contrast to enameller Christian Friedrich Zincke (ca. 1684–1767), who charged a startling thirty guineas for a miniature in 1741. Ten guineas equates to 210 shillings, or fourteen months of a sailor’s wages.

Unknown owner, by May 13, 1942 [1];

Purchased from the unknown owner’s sale, Catalogue of Valuable Jewels, Miniatures, Objects of Vertu, Silhouettes, Etc., Sotheby’s, London, May 13, 1942, lot 89, as A Man, by D. Black, London, 1942 [2];

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.

Notes

[1] In the Sotheby’s May 13, 1942 sale, lots 86–100 were “The Property of a Collector.”

[2] “An enamel Miniature of a Man, three-quarters sinister, gaze directed at spectator, in a gold-braided blue coat and white waistcoat with yellow border, his curled white wig tied at the neck with a black ribbon, by Gervase Spencer, signed with initials, in silver-gilt frame.” According to Art Prices Current (1941–1942), “D. Black” bought lot 89 for £9.

The Starr Foundation Collection of Miniatures, The Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, December 8, 1972–January 14, 1973, no cat., no. 40, as Unknown Man.

Catalogue of Valuable Jewels, Miniatures, Objects of Vertu, Silhouettes, Etc. (London: Sotheby’s, May 13, 1942), 14, 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. 40, p. 18, (repro.), as Unknown Man.