Portrait of Elizabeth Stanley, Countess of Derby

With Duveen Brothers, London, by 1912 [1];

Hans Freiherr Reitzes von Marienwert (1877–1935), Vienna, by 1924 [2];

Mr. John W. (1905–2000) and Mrs. Martha Jane (1906–2011) Starr, Kansas City, MO, 1949 [3];

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

Notes:

[1] It is unknown when the Duveens acquired or sold the miniature, but it is illustrated on page 38 of an unpublished stock album along with several other Starr miniatures. It was in their hands by 1912, when they loaned it to an exhibition in Brussels. Duveen Brothers, Miniatures, undated, Series I.A., Box 15, The Getty Research Institute, Special Collections, Los Angeles, California. International Exhibition of Miniatures, Brussels, 1912: British Section (London: Speaight, 1912), 11.

[2] While we are unable to establish a date of acquisition by the Starr family, the miniature was exhibited in 1924 at the Albertina as belonging to Austrian banker Hans Freiherr Reitzes von Marienwert (1877–1935). Several other miniatures cited in [1] on the same page of the Duveen stock album and exhibited by the Duveens in Brussels in 1912 were acquired by von Marienwert as well, most likely purchased at the same time, comprising a group of seventeenth-century miniatures with closely linked twentieth-century provenance narratives. For example, Thomas Flatman’s 1663 Sir Geoffrey Palmer, recently sold as lot 13 at Christie’s on November 20, 2007, was sold by Duveen to von Marienwart, before being acquired by the Starrs’ contemporary Greta Shield Heckett (1899–1976). More conclusively, the provenance for a 1657 portrait of a woman by John Hoskins, sold as lot 13 in the third Pohl-Ströher sale at Sotheby’s, December 5, 2019, was in von Marienwert’s collection by 1924, and it was also later purchased by Mrs. Heckett. If the Hoskins was acquired at the same time as the Nelson-Atkins Portrait of Elizabeth Stanley, Countess of Derby, which seems likely, those dates could apply to our miniature as well. Nicholas Dixon’s Portrait of Sir George Wakeham, 1679, illustrated on page 38 of the stock album, was sold at part II of the Pohl-Ströher sale at Sotheby’s, July 4, 2019, lot 17, also previously owned by Duveen, Marienwart and Heckett.

[3] The Starrs almost certainly purchased this miniature on a trip to Europe in the summer of 1949, as revealed in their correspondence with Josephine Allen, who asked to include some of the Starrs’ new acquisitions for an upcoming exhibition of portrait miniatures at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Cross miniature was exhibited in Four Centuries of Miniature Painting in January 1950. Correspondence with Josephine Allen and Martha Jane Starr, Curatorial file for Four Centuries of Miniature Ptg. - 1950, European Paintings depart­ment, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.