Caroline Schetky Richardson, Portrait of a Man, ca. 1830

Chicago:

Maggie Keenan, “Caroline Schetky Richardson, Portrait of a Man, ca. 1830,” 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. 1, ed. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024), https://doi.org/10.37764/8322.5.3218.

MLA:

Keenan, Maggie. “Caroline Schetky Richardson, Portrait of a Man, ca. 1830,” 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. 1, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024. doi: 10.37764/8322.5.3218.

See the artist’s biography in volume 4.

This portrait of an unknown man is one of only three identified miniatures by Caroline Schetky Richardson completed after her marriage to Samuel Richardson (1785–1847) in 1825.¹ The portrait is undated, but her signature includes her married name, Richardson, which points to a post-1825 date. Although Richardson exhibited miniatures prolifically before her marriage, her output decreased significantly afterward.²

The identity of the present sitter remains unknown, but it is tempting to speculate that he was a physician, since Richardson exhibited five portraits of doctors between 1825 and 1832.³ Her brother was a surgeon and could have brokered these connections.⁴ Richardson depicts the sitter’s flushed face and confident grin but falters in capturing true lifelikeness. His eyes are focused in two different directions, perhaps the result of a distracted sitter or of Richardson herself being overloaded with commissions.

Richardson recounts this strain in a letter to her family: “How often have I risen out of bed when a sitter came!”⁵ The miniature’s rushed appearance is again evident in the marks of graphite along the edge of the sitter’s cream-colored vest, suggesting that Richardson sketched the portrait first in pencil and left traces of her preparatory work.⁶ We also know that she used large amounts of gum arabic in her watercolors. This resulted in a more fragile surface, apparent in the loss of pigment around the ivory’s edge.⁷ The thickest paint application appears in the white highlights of the sitter’s cravat, which sticks out toward his face and is rolled in a cone-like shape.

The sitter’s attire is fitting for the 1830s, with his coat’s puffed shoulders visible on either side of the composition. The coat would have had an accentuated waistline, mirroring the hourglass silhouette popularized by women’s fashion at the time.⁸ His strawberry blonde hair is disheveled, brushed forward probably to conceal a receding hairline, with no indication of sideburns. The miniature’s simple case with a blue glass back befits the sitter’s unassuming appearance.

Notes

1. Massachusetts Vital Records, 1840–1911: 1825, New England Historic Genealogical Society. They married on December 18, so the present work probably dates to 1826 or later. See the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1995.156.1–119, as well as the artist’s four portraits listed on the Smithsonian’s “Catalog of American Portraits,” https://npg.si.edu/portraits/research/search/: Hannah Haskins Kast, ca. 1820–30, velvet, leather, glass, paper, 3 7/8 x 3 in. (9.8 x 7.6 cm), New Haven Museum, 1977.376, http://collections.newhavenmuseum.org/mDetail.aspx?rID=1977.376&db=objects&dir=NEWHAVEN&osearch=1977.376; Dr. George Washington Holden, 1825–30, gouache and gold on ivory, 2 5/8 x 2 1/8 in. (6.7 x 5.4 cm), Henry Ford Museum, Dearborn, MI, 65.73.20; James Carroll, location unknown; and the Nelson-Atkins portrait.

2. The Annual Exhibition Record of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts: 1807–1870 (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, 1988), 233; The Boston Athenaeum Art Exhibition Index 1827–1874, ed. Robert Perkins and William Gavin (Boston: Library of the Boston Athenaeum, 1980), 188. She exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts from 1818 to 1826 and at the Boston Athenaeum from 1827 to 1841.

3. Perkins and Gavin, eds., Boston Athenaeum Art Exhibition Index 1827–1874, 188.

4. Alexander (1785–1824) served in the British Army but also had training in the arts; see Danielle Dray, “‘A Character of No Ordinary Cast’: The Life and Work of John Alexander Schetky,” December 8, 2022, The Anatomy Lab (blog), Surgeons’ Hall Museums, Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, https://surgeonshallmuseums.wordpress.com/2022/12/08/a-character-of-no-ordinary-cast-the-life-and-work-of-john-alexander-schetky.

5. Quoted from Laurence Oliphant Schetky, The Schetky Family: A Compilation of Letters, Memoirs and Historical Data (Portland, OR: privately printed by Portland Printing House, 1942), 200. She was quite busy at the beginning of her career; her brother George (1776–1831) wrote: “My Dear Caroline has already begun to paint, & by tomorrow or next day will have finished 2 Portraits.” Schetky, The Schetky Family, 198.

6. Dr. Holden wears similar attire in Richardson’s portrait of him (ca. 1825–30; Henry Ford Museum).

7. According to a conversation with conservator Carol Aiken, March 19–23, 2018, notes in NAMA curatorial files.

8. For reference, see Coat, ca. 1833, silk, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1981.210.4, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/81107.

Mr. John W. (1905–2000) and Mrs. Martha Jane (1906–2011) Starr, Kansas City, MO, by 1958;

Their gift to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1958.

The Starr Foundation Collection of Miniatures, The Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, December 8, 1972–January 14, 1973, no cat., no. 231, as Unknown Man.

Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 231, p. 75, (repro.), as Unknown Man.