Solomon Alexander Hart, Portrait of Edmund Kean, 1827

Chicago:

Cara Nordengren with Blythe Sobol, “Solomon Alexander Hart, Portrait of Edmund Kean, 1827,” 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, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024), https://doi.org/10.37764/8322.5.1416.

MLA:

Nordengren, Cara, with Blythe Sobol. “Solomon Alexander Hart, Portrait of Edmund Kean, 1827,” 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: 10.37764/8322.5.1416.

See the artist’s biography in volume 4.

This miniature was previously thought to depict Charles Kean (1811–1868) due to a later inscription on the back of the case. In fact, it portrays his father, Edmund Kean (1787–1833), a celebrated London actor with a talent for Shakespearean tragedies.¹ The artist, Solomon Alexander Hart, documented Kean’s sitting for this miniature in his memoirs.² The subject’s features and attire also strongly resemble a popular print of Edmund Kean that circulated in London in about 1820.³

Edmund Kean’s life was one of vicissitudes, from a migratory childhood as an actress’s son to the heights of his career, when he was admired by literati like Lord Byron and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, to the infamy of a public trial of “criminal conversation” with another man’s wife.⁴ In 1827, the year the Nelson-Atkins miniature was painted, Edmund’s sixteen-year-old son, Charles Kean, made his acting debut at Drury Lane as Young Norval in John Home’s tragedy Douglas.⁵ While it is possible that this portrait depicts Charles attempting to emulate his father in order to bolster his own nascent acting career, Charles’s youth at the time—and the fact that Hart painted other portrait miniatures of Edmund—supports the miniature’s identification as the elder Kean.

Charles’s turn to the stage was in direct opposition to Edmund Kean’s desire that he himself be the only actor of the Kean name. To Edmund’s fury, Young Norval was also his own first major role, and Drury Lane was the stage where he enjoyed his greatest success. In March 1833, the two Keans acted opposite one another for what was likely the first time. This performance was Edmund’s last. He collapsed onstage and died shortly thereafter.⁶

Notes

1. Peter Thomson, “Kean, Edmund,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, January 8, 2015, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/15204.

2. Alexander Brodie, ed., The Reminiscences of Solomon Alexander Hart (London: Wyman and Sons, 1882), 133. Hart wrote, “About the year 1825, I was commissioned by William Sands, the bookseller at the corner of St. James’s Street, Pall Mall, to paint half-a-dozen small miniatures of Edmund Kean. Some were to serve as centres of horizontal snuff-boxes, others as breast-pins. For this purpose I had an introduction to Kean. I found him in his bed-room, at the Hummums, in Covent Garden. There I received his instructions, and had the requisite number of sittings. These I obtained with difficulty, because he was in bed until a late hour, and had a great many visitors.”

3. T. or J. Wright, Mr. Kean, ca. 1820, printed ink on paper, 5 4/5 x 3 1/3 in. (14.8 x 8.5 cm), Victoria and Albert Museum, London, S.802-2013, https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1261078/mr-kean-print-t-or-j/.

4. Thomson, “Kean, Edmund.”

5. M. Glen Wilson, “Kean, Charles John,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, January 3, 2008, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/15203.

6. Thomson, “Kean, Edmund.”

With Sidney Hand (1877–1952), London, by 1924–1952 [1];

Sold at his posthumous sale, Catalogue of Fine Portrait Miniatures, Objects of Vertu, Gold Boxes, Etc., Sotheby’s, London, November 25, 1952, lot 49, as Charles Kean [2];

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] With thanks to Cara Nordengren for her research on this miniature, and Maggie Keenan for her provenance research. Sidney Hand was a London dealer who exhibited a large group of portrait miniatures in their gallery in 1924, including Portrait of Charles Kean, 1827, F58-60/69. A printed catalogue was published to coincide with their display.

[2] According to the sales catalogue, “An Interesting Documentary Collection of Portrait Miniatures mostly signed by the Artists. The Property of a Gentleman (decd.) [Sold by Order of the Executors]” sold lots 1–55. Hand died on May 18, 1952. His 1924 “Signed Miniatures” exhibition aligns with the 1952 catalogue description of a collection “mostly signed.”

T. or J. Wright, Mr. Kean, ca. 1820, printed ink on paper, 5 4/5 x 3 1/3 in. (14.8 x 8.5 cm), Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

J. Didsbury (publisher), Portrait of Edmund Kean, ca. 1820, 11 1/2 x 9 1/5 in. (29.2 x 23.4 cm), Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Signed Miniatures, Sidney Hand, London, 1924, no. 2, as Charles Kean, the Actor [1].

Notes

[1] The exact dates of the exhibition are unknown.

Signed Miniatures, exh. cat. (London: Sidney Hand, 1924), 10, 18, (repro.).

Catalogue of Fine Portrait Miniatures, Objects of Vertu, Gold Boxes, Etc. (London: Sotheby’s, November 25, 1952), 8 (repro.).

Ross E. Taggart, ed., Handbook of the Collections in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 4th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1959), 264.

Leo R. Schidlof, The Miniature in Europe: In the 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries (Graz, Austria: Akademische Druck- U. Verlagsanstalt, 1964), 334.

Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 211, p. 71, (repro.), as Charles Kean (Actor).