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John Smart, Portrait of a Girl, 1769

doi: 10.37764/8322.5.1524

Artist John Smart (English, 1741–1811)
Title Portrait of a Girl
Object Date 1769
Medium Watercolor on ivory
Setting Gilt copper alloy case with blue glass over embossed foil, braided hair in back
Dimensions Sight: 1 1/2 x 1 3/16 in. (3.8 x 3 cm)
Framed: 2 7/8 x 2 1/2 in. (7.3 x 6.4 cm)
Inscription Inscribed on recto, lower left: “J.S. / 1769.”
Credit Line Gift of the Starr Foundation, Inc., F65-41/10

Citation


Chicago:

Blythe Sobol, “John Smart, Portrait of a Girl, 1769,” 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/10.37764/8322.5.1524.

MLA:

Sobol, Blythe. “John Smart, Portrait of a Girl, 1769,” 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: 10.37764/8322.5.1524.

Artist's Biography


See the artist’s biography in volume 4.

Catalogue Entry


This portrait of a young girl dates to the end of the first decade of John Smart’s career as a professional miniaturist and reflects his growing accomplishment and reputation among more fashionable clients. Although the coloring in the dress and flesh tones has faded, perhaps due to red lake pigments, the miniature remains skillfully painted, with fine brushstrokes and meticulous attention to detail, particularly in the sitter’s elaborate costume.

The young girl is fashionably dressed in a fur-trimmed pink gown, blue velvet sash, and tulle turban bedecked with a blue jewel and a jaunty blue feather, so plump and high that it escapes the top of the picture plane. The open weave of the tulle is wonderfully painted by Smart in and layered strokes. Beaded pearl trim wraps around the turban and sash. Like the fur trim, turban, and feather, pearls were a common motif of , an exoticized style loosely inspired by the fashions of the Ottoman Empire. Turquerie was in vogue again after the posthumous publication of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s Turkish Embassy Letters in 1763.

The sitter’s hair appears to be cut in a somewhat short, practical style. Its feathery, wayward curls contrast with the elegant, highly polished, and perhaps even fussy outfit, which might otherwise have been worn by a much older, more sophisticated woman. The sitter’s cool, subdued gaze and stiff pose, probably supported by a set of , suggest some physical discomfort with her formal attire and evoke the reticence of a young girl who is not yet reconciled to the expectations of maturity implied by her fashionable, albeit playful costume.

The portrait is beautifully presented in a fine case, with a border of blue Bristol glass laid over a sheet of embossed foil. The presentation is misleading, however, as the miniature has been placed in the back of the case, almost certainly at a later date, where a hair memento would normally be. A thick plait of brown hair has been added to the original front of the case. This style of memento was a trademark of Gilded Age dealers, who added in hefty braids of hair to appeal to collectors of the era.

Blythe Sobol
June 2024

Notes

  1. Montagu’s book was a collection of her letters, which she had written, revised, and circulated among friends during her lifetime, based on the years she spent abroad after her husband was appointed Ambassador to the Court of Turkey in 1716. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, The Turkish Embassy Letters: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, ed. Malcom Jack (London: Virago, 1994).

  2. Kate Retford has written quite thoughtfully about portraits of children in the eighteenth century and how they reflect changing conceptions of childhood and parenting at the time. Kate Retford, The Art of Domestic Life: Family Portraiture in Eighteenth-Century England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006).

  3. According to conversations with conservator Carol Aiken during a survey of the collection March 19–23, 2018; notes in NAMA curatorial files.

Provenance


John W. (1905–2000) and Martha Jane (1906–2011) Starr, Kansas City, MO, by 1965;

Their gift to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1965.

Exhibitions


John Smart—Miniaturist: 1741/2–1811, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, December 9, 1965–January 2, 1966, no cat., as Young Lady.

The Starr Foundation Collection of Miniatures, The Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, December 8, 1972–January 14, 1973, no cat., no. 95, as Unknown Young Lady.

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 a Girl.

References


Leo Schidlof, The Miniature in Europe (Graz: Akademische Druck, 1964), 2:1044, pl. 540, (repro.), as Young Lady Wearing a Fur Trimmed Dress and a Pearl Trimmed Turban.

Daphne Foskett, “Miniatures by John Smart: The Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum,” Antiques 90, no. 3 (September 1966): 354, (repro.).

Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 95, p. 37, (repro.), as Unknown Young Lady.

No known related works at this time. If you have additional information on this object, please tell us more.

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