John Smart, Portrait of a Woman, Possibly Elizabeth Ramus, 1776

Chicago:

Maggie Keenan, “John Smart, Portrait of a Woman, Possibly Elizabeth Ramus, 1776,” 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/10.37764/8322.5.1546.

MLA:

Keenan, Maggie. “John Smart, Portrait of a Woman, Possibly Elizabeth Ramus, 1776,” 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: 10.37764/8322.5.1546.

See the artist’s biography in volume 4.

This sitter bears some resemblance to Elizabeth Ramus (1751–1848), later Baroness de Nougal, whom George Romney (1734–1802) painted the year after John Smart completed this portrait miniature (Fig. 1).¹ A label on the miniature’s case back also hints at this connection. The inscription identifies “Miss Ramus” and points toward Romney’s 1777 portrait as well as its previous owner: William Frederick Danvers Smith (1868–1928), 2nd Viscount Hambleden.² This suggests that the inscription may have been made in the early 1900s, possibly by a dealer who saw Romney’s Portrait of Miss Ramus reproduced in Thomas Humphry Ward and William Roberts’s 1904 catalogue raisonné.³

John Smart, an active member of the Society of Artists of Great Britain, co-authored a letter to Romney in 1775 asking that he send “such of your works as you intend for Exhibition.”⁴ Despite the society’s lengthy appeals, Romney did not send any pictures.⁵ By the next year, the society was financially insolvent, and “there was no alternative but the sale of the premises.”⁶ The same year this young woman sat for Smart, he was arranging the auction of the society’s building, which may have created a financial incentive for him to secure a surplus of his own commissions.

There is a Smart drawing of a “Miss Ramus” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Fig. 2), although the title is based not on an inscription but a 1914 sale in which it appeared.⁷ The sitter looks like a slightly younger version of the woman in the Nelson-Atkins portrait, underscoring the stylistic similarities of Smart’s depictions of women during this time. The present sitter’s tired and somewhat sad eyes match the brown-beige of her hair and painted background. Her likeness lacks the rosy complexion seen in other Smart miniatures; her bottom lip fades into flesh tones; and she appears pale and sickly. The portrait’s faded color is the largest difference between the Nelson-Atkins work and Romney’s oil painting, although it remains uncertain if our sitter is indeed Elizabeth Ramus.

Pearls decorate the right edge of her blue gown, which shows signs of paint loss and retouching. While her hair is otherwise perfectly combed and coiled, a long, uncurled tendril trails down her left side. This untamed section of her mane was initially mistaken for fur trim, but closer inspection reveals long, individual hairs that wind all the way down the ivory support. Another Smart portrait from 1776 shares this same distinct hairstyle,⁸ suggesting that it was intentional and not merely the result of a woman rushing to get ready and forgetting to curl half her hair.

Notes

1. See George Romney, Portrait of Elizabeth Ramus, 1777, oil on canvas, 30 x 25 1/8 in. (76.2 x 63.8 cm), sold at Christie’s, London, “Old Master and British Paintings,” July 2, 2013, lot 50, https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-5701804.

2. A Romney portrait of Elizabeth’s sister, Benedetta Ramus (ca. 1777), was also in the collection of Viscount Hambleden. Romney painted a double portrait of the sisters, but it was destroyed in a fire at Baron Rothschild’s Waddesdon Manor; see the lot essay for Romney, Portrait of Elizabeth Ramus, cited in n. 1.

3. Thomas Humphry Ward and William Roberts, Romney: A Biographical and Critical Essay with a Catalogue Raisonné of His Works (London: T. Agnew, 1904), 1:50. The inscriber of the label may have also seen the drawing Miss Ramus (now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art) when it came up for sale in 1914; see n. 7.

4. The letter is transcribed in full in Daphne Foskett, John Smart: The Man and His Miniatures (London: Cory, Adams, and Mackay, 1964), 6.

5. Algernon Graves, The Society of Artists and the Free Society (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1907), 324–25.

6. Quoted in Foskett, John Smart, 7. “The premises” included an exhibition room in the Strand, London, as well as four houses. The sale of the property took place on July 26, 1776, by Mr. Christie. It sold for ₤4,470 to “Mr Turner of Birmingham.”

7. According to the Met’s provenance: Christie’s, London, May 28, 1914, lot 35, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/437694. The present author also discovered the drawing in a later sale: Christie’s, London, February 22, 1924.

8. John Smart, Miss Mary Lewin, later Mrs. Ralph Jackson, 1776, 2 1/8 in. (5.4 cm) high, sold at Christie’s, London, “Important Gold Boxes, Objects of Vertu, and Portrait Miniatures,” May 25, 2004, lot 84, https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-4280874.

Mr. John W. (1905–2000) and Mrs. Martha Jane (1906–2011) Starr, Kansas City, MO, by 1965 [1];

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

Notes

[1] The miniature’s label refers to William Frederick Danvers Smith (1868–1928), 2nd Viscount Hambleden, but this is a reference to George Romney’s 1777 portrait of Elizabeth Ramus, who bears resemblance to the sitter, once in the collection of the 2nd Viscount Hambleden.

John Smart, Miss Ramus, ca. 1770, pencil and watercolor on paper, 2 1/4 x 2 in. (5.7 x 5.1 cm), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 59.23.75.

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

The Starr Foundation Collection of Miniatures, The Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, December 8, 1972–January 14, 1973, no cat., no. 102, as Unknown 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 Woman, Possibly Elizabeth Ramus.

Daphne Foskett, “Miniatures by John Smart: The Starr collection in the Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum,” Antiques (September 1966): 355.

Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 102, p. 39, (repro.), as Unknown Lady.

Graham Reynolds, English Portrait Miniatures (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 134, no. 85, (repro.), as An Unknown Lady.