Citation
Chicago:
Blythe Sobol, “John Smart, Portrait of a Man, 1795,” 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/10.37764/8322.5.1604.
MLA:
Sobol, Blythe. “John Smart, Portrait of a Man, 1795,” 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: 10.37764/8322.5.1604.
Artist's Biography
See the artist’s biography in volume 4.
Catalogue Entry
This miniature was painted during Smart’s final year in India. The double-lined “I” inscribed below the date confirms this. Unfortunately, the sitter, a middle-aged man, remains unidentified. He was almost certainly a civil servant working for the Honourable East India Company (HEIC): A British joint-stock company founded in 1600 to trade in the Indian Ocean region. The company accounted for half the world’s trade from the 1750s to the early 1800s, including items such as cotton, silk, opium, and spices. It later expanded to control large parts of the Indian subcontinent by exercising military and administrative power., like most British men in Madras (modern-day Chennai). His keen blue-gray eyes provide a striking contrast with his ruddy, windblown skin. His nose and cheeks, in particular, are reddish and mottled in contrast to his paler forehead, which he probably protected from the sun with a broad-brimmed hat.
Deep gray and purple shadows around the sitter’s eyes echo the cool tones of his prominent five o’clock shadow, which is nearly blue beneath his nose and on the sides of his mouth. His powdered wig, too, has motley coloring in shades of gray, pink, and purple, with a deeper brown queue: The long curl of a wig. of his natural hair visible just beneath his ear. Remnants of this hair powder, in shades of gray and apparently purple, are dusted across the high collar and shoulders of his blue jacket with angled frenetic strokes and smaller, layered 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.. Beautiful passages of white and gray pigment: A dry coloring substance typically of mineral or organic origins until the nineteenth century, when they began to be artificially manufactured. Pigments were ground into powder form by the artist, their workshop assistants, or by the vendor they acquired the pigment from, before being mixed with a binder and liquid, such as water. Pigments vary in granulation and solubility. and graphite: Graphite, or plumbago as it was called in the seventeenth century, is a form of soft carbon, easily sharpened to a point, which deposits a metallic gray color on a surface, ideal for precise writing and drawing. It was first encased in wood in the mid-sixteenth century, a form now referred to as a pencil. See also plumbago. build his voluminous, frilled white cravat: A cravat, the precursor to the modern necktie and bowtie, is a rectangular strip of fabric tied around the neck in a variety of ornamental arrangements. Depending on social class and budget, cravats could be made in a variety of materials, from muslin or linen to silk or imported lace. It was originally called a “Croat” after the Croatian military unit whose neck scarves first caused a stir when they visited the French court in the 1660s. from a shapeless blank mass to a sculptural form spilling down his chest. This man’s serious demeanor and worn appearance suggest a life of long days and late nights devoted to serving the British empire.
Provenance
Possibly with I. Rosenbaum, Frankfurt, Germany, by December 14, 1910;
Possibly purchased from I. Rosenbaum by Henry (1840–1928) and Emma (née Lazarus, 1852–1937) Budge, Hamburg, Germany, December 14, 1910–1937 [1];
Purchased at Emma’s posthumous sale, Die Sammlung Frau Emma Budge Hamburg, Paul Graupe, Berlin, lot 342, October 4–6, 1937, by Erich Schall, Berlin-Wilmersdorf, Germany, 1937 [2];
Mr. John W. (1905–2000) and Mrs. Martha Jane (1906–2011) Starr, Kansas City, MO;
Their gift to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1965.
Notes
[1] A book listing Henry Budge’s purchases from the Frankfurt dealer I. Rosenbaum contains the following entry on page 36: “1 Miniatur von J. Smart 1792. Alter Herr.” Although not definitive, this may be the Nelson-Atkins object. Although the miniature is now dated 1795, it was catalogued in the 1937 Budge auction with the date 1792. Frick Art Reference Library, New York, MS 065 Rosenberg & Stiebel Archive, “Ankäufe des Herrn Henry Budge Hamburg.” Copies in Nelson-Atkins curatorial file. With thanks to MacKenzie Mallon, Provenance Specialist, for her diligence and support in compiling this provenance narrative.
[2] The Graupe sale was originally scheduled for September 27–29, 1937, but was postponed to October 4–6, 1937. The price estimate for this miniature was 600 RM; the final sale was for 710 RM. Schall’s name appears in an annotated copy of the catalogue held by the National Art Library, Victoria and Albert Museum, London. He also purchased lot 341. Schall was the manager of the Freie Succession artists’ group (founded by Max Liebermann) in Berlin from 1913–1918.
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 Gentleman.
The Starr Foundation Collection of Miniatures, The Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, December 8, 1972–January 14, 1973, no cat., no. 128, as Unknown Man.
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 Man.
References
Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 128, p. 45, (repro.), as Unknown Man.
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