Portrait of Mrs. Ronalds
Framed: 3 1/8 × 2 1/2 inches (7.94 × 6.35 cm)
- 128
John Smart—Miniaturist: 1741/2–1811, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, December 9, 1965–January 2, 1966, no cat., as Mrs. Ronalds.
The Starr Foundation Collection of Miniatures, The Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, December 8, 1972–January 14, 1973, no cat., no. 131, as Mrs. Ronalds.
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 Mrs. Ronalds.
Unknown owner, by May 31, 1960 [1];
Purchased from the unknown owner’s sale, English and Continental Miniatures, Christie, Manson, and Woods, London, May 31, 1960, lot 80, as Mrs. Ronalds, by Leggatt Brothers, London, probably on behalf of Mr. John W. (1905–2000) and Mrs. Martha Jane (1906–2011) Starr, Kansas City, MO, 1960–1965 [2];
Their gift to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1965.
Notes
[1] According to the 1960 sales catalogue, “Different Properties” sold lots 1–80.
[2] According to the lot description, “Mrs. Ronalds, by John Smart, signed and dated 1798, three quarter face to the left, gaze directed at the artist, wearing simple white muslin dress with a narrow blue ribbon–oval, 3 1/8 in. high–unframed, in red leather case. See Frontispiece.” According to the attached price list, Leggatt bought lot 80 for £240. Archival research has shown that Leggatt Brothers served as purchasing agents for the Starrs. See correspondence between Betty Hogg and Martha Jane Starr, May 15 and June 3, 1950, Nelson-Atkins curatorial files.
Catalogue of English and Continental Miniatures (London: Christie, Manson, and Woods, May 31, 1960), 16, (repro.), as Mrs. Ronalds.
Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 131, p. 46, (repro.), as Mrs. Ronalds.
Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, “John Smart, Portrait of Mrs. Ronalds, 1798,” catalogue entry and Stephanie Spence and John Twilley technical 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/10.37764/8322.5.1610.
