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 fugitive pigments: Fugitive pigments are not lightfast, which means they are not permanent. They can lighten, darken, or nearly disappear over time through exposure to environmental conditions such as sunlight, humidity, temperature, or even pollution. 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 hatched: A technique using closely spaced parallel lines to create a shaded effect. When lines are placed at an angle to one another, the technique is called cross-hatching. 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 à la turque (turquerie): The term “à la turque,” or “Turkish style,” was used throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to describe a wide range of artistic styles and artforms, from fashion to furniture and even music. For Europeans, the Turkish categorization served as a generalized inspiration for a style perceived as “exotic” and loosely derived from designs sourced from across Turkey and the Middle East. “Turkish” figures in such designs were heavily stereotyped and often sexualized., 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 1763.1Montagu’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).
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 stays: A stiff, boned undergarment typically worn by women and occasionally men to provide shape and support., 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.2Kate Retford has written quite thoughtfully about portraits of children in the eighteenth century and how they reflects 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).
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.3According to conversations with conservator Carol Aiken during a survey of the collection March 19–23, 2018; notes in NAMA curatorial files. A thick plait of brown hair has been added to the original front of the case. This style of robber baron hair: An idiomatic term that refers to the thick plait of braided hair that was often added to the back of the case of a miniature when it was repackaged for sale in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These miniatures were frequently marketed to the so-called “robber baron” collectors, Gilded Age industrialists like J.P. Morgan, who collected portrait miniatures at a large scale and, in general, liked their purchases to appear tidy and complete. Although many original portrait miniatures do not contain hair mementos, some buyers expected them to be included. See also hair art. memento was a trademark of Gilded Age dealers, who added in hefty braids of hair to appeal to collectors of the era.
Notes
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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).
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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).
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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.
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