William Armfield Hobday, Portrait of a Man, 1790–95

Chicago:

Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, “William Armfield Hobday, Portrait of a Man, 1790–95,” 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/10.37764/8322.5.1423.

MLA:

Marcereau DeGalan, Aimee. “William Armfield Hobday, Portrait of a Man, 1790–95,” 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: 10.37764/8322.5.1423.

See the artist’s biography in volume 4.

Previously attributed to English artist William Wood (1769–1810), this portrait of a man wearing a blue coat and a red-and-white striped waistcoat before a sky background is now believed to be painted by Wood’s near-contemporary William Armfield Hobday (1771–1831). The signature oversized blue eyes and large, heavy brows are physical characteristics that Hobday’s biographer suggested the artist possessed himself.¹

Hobday lived in London but regularly visited the port city of Bristol and the spa town of Bath to attract a new wealthy clientele. It was probably in one of these towns where the present portrait was painted of this young, handsome man who was likely on the marriage market. Within the confines of its newly designed Grand Pump Rooms, Bath became a space where eager young hopefuls could catch a glimpse of their paramours.² One could imagine a similar scenario ensuing with this young sitter, with his lightly feathered Prince of Wales hairstyle, fashionable from around 1790 to 1795, suggesting a date for the present portrait.

Hobday’s style was generally pleasing and his portraits well-drawn, but he was criticized for heavy coloring and an inability to capture the character of the individual in his larger oil paintings.³ He had more success with small-scale miniature portraits. His technique in watercolor started with small blue lines to outline the features and then the addition of carmine and light red to create the final effect.⁴ Close inspection of the present work reveals these small hatched blue lines in the shadows of the face and an overall pinkish hue to the hair, which may be the result of pigment alteration rather than the artist’s original intent.⁵

The miniature is set within a case that features a hair memento with gold and pearls surrounded by braided hair. While the case’s origin is speculative, the combination of hair and pearls suggests that this could be a mourning miniature, intended as a memento for a loved one to remember the subject after their death.⁶

Notes

1. Hobday’s biographer described him as “short in stature, stout built, and of a fine florid complexion; an intelligent forehead, with rather heavy blue eyes.” See M. Arnold, “Memoir of William Armfield Hobday,” Arnold’s Magazine of the Fine Arts, and Journal of Literature and Science, 2, no. 11 (1831): 391.

2. In Jane Austen’s novel Northanger Abbey, she writes about Catherine Morland, who hastens to the Pump Room in the hope of seeing Mr. Tilney, who sadly does not appear. “Every creature in Bath, except himself, was to be seen in the room at different periods of the fashionable hours.” Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey, ed. Susan J. Wolfson (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014), 93.

3. Arnold, “Memoir of William Armfield Hobday,” 386–87.

4. Arnold, “Memoir of William Armfield Hobday,” 386–87.

5. As part of a larger technical study of the prevalence of pink hair in the work of John Smart (1741–1811), we are conducting research that will be published in the fourth launch of this catalogue, scheduled for the spring of 2025.

6. In her survey of the collection in 2017, miniature specialist and conservator Carol Aiken suggested the case looked French. See survey 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.

Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 185, p. 63, (repro.), as by William Wood, Unknown Man.