Portrait of a Royal Navy Captain
Framed: 1 5/16 × 1 1/8 inches (3.33 × 2.86 cm)
Unknown owner, by May 13, 1942 [1];
Purchased from the unknown owner’s sale, Catalogue of Valuable Jewels, Miniatures, Objects of Vertu, Silhouettes, Etc., Sotheby’s, London, May 13, 1942, lot 89, as A Man, by D. Black, London, 1942 [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] In the Sotheby’s May 13, 1942 sale, lots 86–100 were “The Property of a Collector.”
[2] “An enamel Miniature of a Man, three-quarters sinister, gaze directed at spectator, in a gold-braided blue coat and white waistcoat with yellow border, his curled white wig tied at the neck with a black ribbon, by Gervase Spencer, signed with initials, in silver-gilt frame.” According to Art Prices Current (1941–1942), “D. Black” bought lot 89 for £9.
Catalogue of Valuable Jewels, Miniatures, Objects of Vertu, Silhouettes, Etc. (London: Sotheby’s, May 13, 1942), 14, as A Man.
Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 40, p. 18, (repro.), as Unknown Man.
