Alexander Gallaway, Portrait of a Man, 1796

Chicago:

Maggie Keenan, “Alexander Gallaway, Portrait of a Man, 1796,” 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/10.37764/8322.5.1408.

MLA:

Keenan, Maggie. “Alexander Gallaway, Portrait of a Man, 1796,” 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: 10.37764/8322.5.1408

See the artist’s biography in volume 4.

This portrait stands out from Alexander Gallaway’s oeuvre of miniatures for its unique landscape background. Gallaway typically painted either sky or an architectural feature like columns or curtains in his portrait backgrounds. Here, however, the Scottish artist depicted a landscape vista featuring a scene that may be a view of Dumbarton Rock, looking west from the banks of the river Clyde.¹ Gallaway renders rows of masts, two land peninsulas, and rays of sunshine extending between two mountains, all at a minute scale. If this is indeed Dumbarton, the exaggerated sunburst illustrates a sunset over the west coast of Scotland. This rare depiction of a port city was probably a request from the sitter, signaling his possible profession as a merchant trading in sugar, tobacco, or tea—products that regularly came through the British Isles to the busy port city of Dumbarton.²

The back of the miniature’s case is also distinct. Its embellished purple glass is extremely unusual, suggesting that it was commissioned for the sitter.³ The glass surrounds a braid of brown hair, an emblem of love or remembrance for whomever this miniature was intended. The sitter is portrayed in a simple blue coat with gold buttons.⁴ His dispassionate gaze shares the same cobalt-blue color of his coat and sky. He has an ample jawline and a subtle hint of a cleft chin. Tightly curled sideburns frame the sides of his face and transform into softer waves throughout his powdered hair. An escaped strand of hair on his forehead leads one’s eye up to a mysterious bump at the back of his head, which curiously mirrors the mountainous rock formation to the right of his shoulder.

The sitter’s face and the background are made up entirely of tiny, stippled dots. This painting technique foreshadows nineteenth-century Neo-Impressionist painter Georges Seurat’s (French, 1859–1891) dots of pure color almost one hundred years later. The precision in Gallaway’s technique suggests he had academic training, although scholars know very little about his early education in the arts. Along with the port scene, case back, and stippling technique, this portrait is also exemplary for being the earliest surviving signed and dated example of Gallaway’s work.⁵

Notes

1. For reference, see John Knox (Scottish, 1778–1845), On the Banks of the River Clyde, Dumbarton Rock in the Distance, n.d., oil on canvas, 25 x 35 in. (63.5 x 89 cm), sold at Fine 19th Century Paintings, Bonhams, London, November 1, 2001, lot 65. Thanks to author Michael Meighan, who pointed me in the direction of the Firth of Clyde, particularly Dumbarton Rock; Meighan to the author, March 1, 2023, NAMA curatorial files. Gallaway was working in Glasgow, another large port city only a few miles away from Clydebank, as early as 1794. See an advertisement he ran in the Glasgow Courier on May 31 and June 3 of that year, quoted in Daphne Foskett, Miniatures: Dictionary and Guide (Woodbridge: Antique Collectors Club, 1987), 217.

2. The Scots were overrepresented as plantation owners, merchants, attorneys, bankers, and overseers in the British islands. Scotland and the British Empire, ed. John M. Mackenzie and T. M. Devine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 40, 49, 51. In 1773, 46 million pounds of tobacco were shipped from Scotland to continental destinations (38).

3. This was first suggested by Elle Shushan, in conversations with Aimee Marcereau DeGalan and Katelyn Crawford, curators at the Nelson-Atkins, March 27–31, 2017, NAMA curatorial files.

4. His tied cravat resembles Gallaway’s approach to other portraits: the bottom of the bow appears transparent, with opaque white dots at the tips. It closely resembles another 1796 portrait of a man, previously in the collection of Philip Mould. See Alexander Gallaway, Portrait Miniature of a Gentleman, 1794, watercolor on ivory, 2 11/16 in. (6.8 cm) high, Historical Portraits Image Library, accessed April 26, 2023, https://historicalportraits.com/artworks/2602-alexander-gallaway-portrait-miniature-of-a-gentleman-1794/.

5. Stephen Lloyd and Kim Sloan, The Intimate Portrait: Drawings, Miniatures, and Pastels from Ramsey to Lawrence (Edinburgh: National Galleries of Scotland, 2008), 68. According to Lloyd, another 1795 miniature was sold at Christie’s, London, May 15, 1979, lot 60.

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.

Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 188, p. 64, (repro.), as Unknown Man.