John Smart Junior, Portrait of George Babington, Battalion Surgeon of the 3rd Foot Guards, 1807

Chicago:

Maggie Keenan, “John Smart Junior, Portrait of George Babington, Battalion Surgeon of the 3rd Foot Guards, 1807,” 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. 4, ed. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2025), https://doi.org/10.37764/8322.5.1642.

MLA:

Keenan, Maggie. “John Smart Junior, Portrait of George Babington, Battalion Surgeon of the 3rd Foot Guards, 1807,” 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. 4, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2025. doi: 10.37764/8322.5.1642.

See the artist’s biography in volume 4.

Military uniform history reveals the identity of this long-lost sitter. He is depicted in the full-dress uniform of the 3rd Regiment of Foot Guards, and the devices on his epaulette and the absence of the uniform’s standard blue lapels indicate he was a battalion surgeon.¹ The medal affixed to his coat is a Sultan’s Gold Medal, awarded for serving in the Egyptian campaign of 1801. Only one of the regiment’s two surgeons served in Egypt, enabling the conclusive identification of the sitter as George Babington (1776–1817), Battalion Surgeon of the 3rd Foot Guards.² Babington received the medal for an injury he sustained in the Battle of Aboukir in 1801.³

George Babington was born on December 29, 1776.⁴ He studied at St. Thomas and Guy’s Hospitals and became surgeon of the 3rd Foot Guards in 1795, which he served for thirteen years before eventually resigning.⁵ A few months later, he joined the Bengal Army of the Honourable East India Company as an assistant surgeon, later participating in the invasion of Java in 1811.⁶ Babington died in Amboyna, India, on November 18, 1817.⁷ He probably commissioned this 1807 miniature to commemorate his departure from the Foot Guards.

John Smart Junior and Babington were the same age when Smart painted this portrait. They may have met through military connections: new research reveals that Smart joined the Royal Westminster Volunteer Infantry as an ensign in 1803 and was promoted to lieutenant on October 7, 1805.⁸ He was therefore well aware of the specificities of military uniforms, and it is in these details where Smart shines. His attentiveness to the surgeon’s attire is apparent through cross-hatching in the bars of gold lace that extend from his coat buttons and the realistic appearance of the epaulettes’ twisted fringe. He used gold leaf to enhance the epaulettes and lace of Babington’s uniform and heighten their brilliance.⁹

Smart had a relatively short artistic career; he died at thirty-three, two years after painting this portrait. While his military service apparently placed him within Babington’s orbit, little else is known about his military training. However, his father, also named John Smart (1741–1811), guided his artistic education, as did lessons from Robert Bowyer (1758–1834).¹⁰ Notwithstanding this training, much of the younger Smart’s work lacks the convincing realism and polish of his father’s miniatures.¹¹ John Smart Junior’s sitters frequently have disproportionate heads and facial features, seen here in Babington’s narrow shoulders and large, rounded eyes and eyebrows. Balancing these and other technical shortcomings against his exquisite attention to sartorial detail, one is left to wonder whether these defects may have been resolved in time and if the son might someday have rivaled the father.

Notes

1. Colonel William Johnston, Roll of Commissioned Officers in the Medical Service of the British Army (1727–1898), ed. Lieutenant-Colonel Harry Howell (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1917), 95. There were only two surgeons in this regiment: surgeon major and assistant surgeon. William Alexander Hay (d. 1841) was surgeon major of the 3rd Foot Guards, but he did not serve in Egypt.

2. This identification is thanks to the help of uniform specialist Christopher Bryant. The London Gazette in 1795 and the Army Lists for 1796–1807 incorrectly call George Babington “Joseph Babington.” See “War-Office, August 1,” London Gazette, no. 13800 (July 28, 1795): 789; and Johnston, Roll of Commissioned Officers, 91; A List of the Officers of the Army and of the Corps of Royal Marines (London: War Office, 1827), 520; Benjamin Guy Babington, Proceedings of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society of London (London: Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society, 1864), 4:86.

3. The Battle of Abukir took place on March 8, 1801, between French and British forces. According to Babington’s first cousin, once removed, Babington witnessed the death of Sir Ralph Abercrombie. Babington, Proceedings, 86; Michael Barthorp, Napoleon’s Egyptian Campaigns 1798–1801 (Oxford: Osprey, 1992), 29. For a comparative image of the medal, see “Sultan’s Medal for Egypt, 1801,” gold, 1 3/5 in., National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, https://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/202794.html.

4. Although Babington’s parents remain unknown (it is possible his father was also named George), his grandparents were Captain Richard Babington of Mullagh and Isabella Wray. Dirom Grey Crawford, Roll of the Indian Medical Service Appendices VIII and XIV: List of Errata (Calcutta: Thacker and Spink, 1930), 58; Burke’s Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry of Ireland, ed. L. G. Pine, 4th ed. (London: Burke’s Peerage, 1958), 42.

5. His military campaign in Egypt preceded a campaign in Den Helder, Flanders, in August 1799. Babington was severely wounded during the charge at Akersloot. Crawford, Roll of the Indian Medical Service, 58; Babington, Proceedings, 86; Crawford, Roll of the Indian Medical Service, 58; “War-Office, August 1,” London Gazette, 789; Johnston, Roll of Commissioned Officers, 91; “Return of Killed, Wounded, and Missing, of His Majesty’s Forces under the Command of His Royal Highness The Duke of York, in the Action of the 6th October 1799,” London Gazette, no. 15193 (October 14, 1799): 1047–48.

6. The invasion was a successful attempt by the British to capture the Dutch East Indian Island of Java. Babington, Proceedings, 86; Sir Bernard Burke, History of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland (London: Harrison and Sons, 1898), 1007; Paul Fregosi, Dreams of Empire: Napoleon and the First World War, 1792–1815 (London: Hutchinson, 1989), 321.

7. Babington married Dorothy Metcalfe at Fort St. George in Madras on October 12, 1812. They had two sons: George William Hopkins Babington and Cornelius Metcalfe Stuart Babington (1816–1862). Babington, Proceedings, 86; “George Babington,” will dated November 16, 1816, Amboyna, India, England and Wales, Prerogative Court of Canterbury Wills, 1384–1858: Kent, Quire Numbers 151–200 (1820), digitized on Ancestrylibrary.com; Burke, History of the Landed Gentry, 1007; Johnston, Roll of Commissioned Officers, 91; “Marriages at Fort St. George, Madras,” The Genealogist 22 (1906): 136; “Mortgage to secure £60 from George William Hopkins Babington of Woburn Square (co. Midd.), gent,” August 29, 1835, Add Mss 5227, West Sussex Record Office, National Archives, Kew.

8. Newspaper extracts from December 1806 confirm this discovery. See “Military Invention,” The Dublin Journal, December 30, 1806, transcribed at http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~dutillieul/genealogy/ZOtherPapers/NewGFDubJ30Dec1806.html (accessed December 29, 2023). See also Great Britain Army, Album of the Queen’s Westminster Volunteers (London: Vacher and Sons, 1904); “War-Office, August 27, 1803,” London Gazette, no. 15614 (August 23, 1803): 1102; “War-Office, December 7, 1805,” London Gazette, no. 15869 (December 3, 1805): 1520. A list of travelers on the Asia from February 12, 1809, includes Smart’s name among eight other cadets. Daphne Foskett reasons: “The possibility of his having hoped to obtain a cadetship is not precluded, in spite of the absence of a cadet paper”; Daphne Foskett, John Smart: The Man and His Miniatures (London: Cory, Adams, and Mackay, 1964), 57. After Smart Junior’s death in Madras, articles sold from his estate included a cocked hat, belted sword, pistol, and “1 Red Coat with an Epaulet.”

9. Although very few miniatures by John Smart Junior exist today, he painted at least four other miniatures of military officers, including a portrait of an officer of the Madras Native Cavalry, which closely resembles the work under consideration here in the sitter’s hair, posture, and stippled gray-brown background but lacks the same level of detail and naturalism. John Smart Junior, An Officer of Madras Native Cavalry, 1805, watercolor on ivory, 2 5/8 in. (6.7 cm) high, sold at Bonhams’ “Fine Portrait Miniatures,” November 23, 2005, lot 79.

10. Daphne Foskett, Miniatures: Dictionary and Guide (Woodbridge: Antique Collectors Club, 1987), 331; “Lord Chamberlain’s Office, March 4,” London Gazette, no. 13074 (March 3, 1789): 109. It is possible, as Foskett argues, that Richard Cosway taught the younger Smart miniature painting. Foskett quotes letters from Cosway to his wife, referring to “honest John Smart” and “good little John” and commenting on Smart’s portraits being too washy and stiff; however, there is no mention of where these letters are located. I have not found or verified these supposed letters, and Cosway specialist Stephen Lloyd had not heard or seen of such letters either, as communicated during his visit to the Nelson-Atkins October 2–4, 2023. Notes in NAMA curatorial files.

11. John Smart Junior painted more frequently with watercolor on paper rather than ivory. He was also familiar with etching, as seen in John Smart Junior, John Smart Junr Esqr, 1808, etching on chine collé, 7 7/8 x 6 5/8 in. (20 x 16.9 cm), British Museum, London, 1958,0411.2, https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1958-0411-2.

Probably commissioned by the sitter, George Babington (1776–1817), Amboyna, India, 1807–1817 [1];

Probably Charles William Dyson Perrins (1864–1958), Worcester, England, by 1929–1958 [2];

Purchased from his posthumous sale, Important English Portrait Miniatures, The Property of the late C. W. Dyson Perrins, Esq., D.C.L., F.S.A., Sotheby’s, London, December 11, 1958, lot 57, as A Miniature of an Officer, by Leggatt Brothers, London, probably on behalf of Mr. John W. (1905–2000) and Mrs. Martha Jane (1906–2011) Starr, Kansas City, MO, 1958–1971 [3];

Their gift to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1971.

Notes

[1] Babington’s wife Dorothy Metcalfe (1784–1858) probably brought the miniature back to England. She died in Mayfair, Middlesex. Dorothy and George had two sons, who may have inherited the miniature: George William Hopkins Babington (1813–1869) and Cornelius Metcalfe Stuart Babington (1816–1862).

[2] According to Basil Long, British Miniatures (London: Holland Press, 1929), 408: “Mr. Dyson Perrins has a miniature of an officer, signed J S J / 1807.”

[3] The sales catalogue describes the miniature: “A Miniature of an Officer by John Smart Junior, signed and dated 1807, head and shoulders three-quarters dexter, gaze directed at spectator, with short powdered hair and slight side whiskers, wearing a scarlet coat with gold epaulettes, against a stippled grey-brown ground, the reverse with a monogram and a coil of hair on an opalescent enamel ground, 2 7/8 in.”

An annotated sales catalogue is located at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, Miller Nichols Library. The catalogue was most likely annotated by Mr. or Mrs. Starr (although lot 57 is not annotated). Leggatt bought the miniature for 85 pounds. 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.

John Smart: Virtuoso in Miniature, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, December 21, 2024–January 4, 2026, no cat., as Portrait of George Babington, Battalion Surgeon of the 3rd Foot Guards.

Basil Long, British Miniatures (London: Holland Press, 1929), 408.

Catalogue of Important English Portrait Miniatures, The Property of the late C. W. Dyson Perrins, Esq., D.C.L., F.S.A. (London: Sotheby’s, December 11, 1958), 16, as A Miniature of an Officer.

Daphne Foskett, John Smart: The Man and His Miniatures (London: Cory, Adams, and Mackay, 1964), 59.

Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 151, p. 53, (repro.), as Unknown Man.