Nathaniel Plimer, Portrait of a Man, Possibly Alexander Sprot, 1788

Chicago:

Maggie Keenan, “Nathaniel Plimer, Portrait of a Man, Possibly Alexander Sprot, 1788,” 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. 3, ed. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan (Kansas City: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024), https://doi.org/10.37764/8322.5.1474.

MLA:

Keenan, Maggie. “Nathaniel Plimer, Portrait of a Man, Possibly Alexander Sprot, 1788,” 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. 3, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024. doi: 10.37764/8322.5.1474

See the artist’s biography in volume 4.

Research into the presumed sitter of this portrait—previously thought to be Sir Joseph Copley—and his family revealed a slew of questions.¹ The attribution had been in place since it was part of J. P. Morgan’s famed portrait miniature collection, sometime before 1935.² However, several intriguing questions arose during the research process for this catalogue.

Joseph Copley, 1st Baronet Sprotbrough, died in 1781. Given this timeline and the portrait’s inscribed date of 1788, Nathaniel Plimer would have had to complete the portrait after Copley’s death, which seems unlikely. Potential alternative sitters from the Copley family include Copley’s son Joseph Copley (1769–1838), 3rd Baronet, who would have been nineteen for this 1788 portrait, or his older brother, Lionel (1767–1806), who was around twenty-one. Yet the sitter’s appearance, characterized by a portly physique and a resolute expression, suggests an older individual.

The association with the Copley family may have originated from their baronetcy name, Sprotbrough, or Sprot.³ Another portrait by Plimer in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum appears to depict a very similar—if not the same—sitter and is also dated 1788. The work is titled Portrait Miniature of Mr. Alexander Sprot or Dr. Adam Sprott of Edinburgh.⁴ Further research uncovered a Dr. Adam Sprott (d. 1817), whose life was primarily spent in the British West Indies.⁵ However, a more likely candidate for the sitter is Alexander Sprot (1746–1825), a resident of Edinburgh who would have been around forty-two at the time this portrait was executed.⁶ Plimer probably visited Edinburgh in the 1780s and 1790s, since he eventually moved his family there from London in 1804.⁷

Whoever the sitter is, Plimer paints him in a caramel-colored coat with a collar that reaches so high it nearly touches the man’s ears. He incorporates his characteristically long, spaced-out lower eyelashes as well as seamlessly stippled brushwork. Alexander Sprot married Elizabeth Rannie on February 11, 1790,⁸ so the portrait may have been commissioned as a gift in the early days of their courtship; the miniature’s pearl surround would have enhanced its appearance while suspended from a woman’s neck.

Notes

1. Thanks to Durwood Intern Keiran Ackermann for her genealogical research into the Copley family.

2. The portrait was sold at The Famous Collection of the British and Foreign Schools: The Property of J. Pierpont Morgan, Esq., Christie’s, London, June 24, 1935, lot 425, as Portrait of Sir Joseph Copley, 3rd Bart.

3. The Copley attribution could have been made when G. C. Williamson surveyed J. P. Morgan’s collection in 1906: Catalogue of the Collection of Miniatures: The Property of J. Pierpont Morgan, ed. G. C. Williamson (London: Chiswick Press, 1906), 75.

4. Nathaniel Plimer, Portrait Miniature of Mr. Alexander Sprot or Dr. Adam Sprott of Edinburgh, 1788, watercolor on ivory, 1 7/8 x 1 1/2 in. (4.8 x 3.7 cm), Victoria and Albert Museum, London, P.101-1910, https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1070008/portrait-miniature-of-mr-alexander-miniature-nathaniel-plimer. The portrait was initially just called Alexander Sprot when it was described and illustrated in George C. Williamson, Andrew and Nathaniel Plimer Miniature Painters: Their Lives and Their Works (London: George Bell and Sons, 1903), 53.

5. He lived on the island of Saint Christopher’s, now called Saint Kitts; The Registers of St. Thomas, Middle Island, St. Kitt, ed. Vere Langford Oliver (London: Mitchell Hughes and Clarke, 1915). For his will, see Records of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, series PROB 11, class PROB 11, piece 1596, National Archives, Kew.

6. John Smith, Scottish Record Society Monumental Inscriptions in St. Cuthbert’s Churchyard, Edinburgh, ed. James Balfour Paul (Edinburgh: J. Skinner, 1915), 63. Sprot is sometimes spelled Sprott. He may have been the same Alexander Sprott working as a tanner in Edinburgh; Peter Williamson, Williamson’s Directory for the City of Edinburgh (Edinburgh: P. Williamson, 1776), unpaginated.

7. “Plimer, N. portrait painter, 1, James’ square,” quoted in “Edinburgh Directors,” The Post-Office Annual Directory (Edinburgh: J. Stark, 1806), 154; Helen Smailes, Peter Black, and Lesley Stevenson, Andrew Geddes, 1783–1844: Painter-Printmaker: “A Man of Pure Taste” (Edinburgh: National Gallery of Scotland, 2001), 24. Plimer lived in Edinburgh for at least ten years, from 1804 to 1813/14.

8. “Alexander Sprott,” marriage license, Scotland, Extracted Parish Records, 1571–1997: 1790, digitized on Ancestrylibrary.com.

John Pierpont Morgan (1837–1913), New York, by 1906–1913;

His posthumous sale, The Famous Collection of the British and Foreign Schools: The Property of J. Pierpont Morgan, Esq. Christie’s, London, June 24, 1935, lot 425, as Portrait of Sir Joseph Copley, 3rd Bart, by Walker, 1935 [1];

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.

NOTES

[1] Described in the catalogue as “Portrait of Sir Joseph Copley, 3rd Bart. Three-quarter face to the left in brown velvet coat and white stock, with powdered wig; sky background—signed with initials and dated 1788. In water colour. Oval—1 7/8 in. by 1 1/2 in. In pearl frame. Illustrated in The Connoisseur, June 1907. Described and illustrated in Dr. G. C. Williamson’s Catalogue, Vol. II, No. 310.” According to the annotated catalogue, “Walker” bought lot 425 for 35 pounds.

Nathaniel Plimer, Portrait Miniature of Mr. Alexander Sprot or Dr. Adam Sprott of Edinburgh, 1788, watercolor on ivory, 1 7/8 x 1 1/2 in. (4.8 x 3.7 cm), Victoria and Albert Museum, London, P.101-1910.

The Starr Foundation Collection of Miniatures, The Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, December 8, 1972–January 14, 1973, no cat., no. 178, as Sir Joseph Copley.

G. C. Williamson, Catalogue of the Collection of Miniatures: The Property of J. Pierpont Morgan (London: Chiswick Press, 1906), no. 310, p. 2:75, (repro.), as Sir Joseph Copley, Baronet, of Sprotborough.

G. C. Williamson, “Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan’s Pictures: The English Miniatures, V,” Connoisseur: An Illustrated Magazine for Collectors 18, no. 70 (June 1907): 71, (repro.), as Sir Joseph Copley.

Catalogue of the Famous Collection of the British and Foreign Schools: The Property of J. Pierpont Morgan, Esq. (London: Christie’s, June 24, 1935), 155, as Portrait of Sir Joseph Copley, 3rd Bart.

Martha Jane and John W. Starr, “Collecting Portrait Miniatures,” Antiques 80, no. 5 (November 1961): 441, (repro.), as Sir Joseph Copley.

Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Trust, 1971), no. 178, p. 61 (repro.), as Sir Joseph Copley.