Portrait of Lady Sarah Harington
Framed: 2 1/16 × 1 1/2 × 1/8 inches (5.24 × 3.81 × 0.32 cm)
Portrait miniatures are intimate tokens of love, loss, allegiance, and affection exchanged between intimates. The earliest examples were painted in watercolor on translucent vellum (animal skin). The vellum was then coated on both sides with a smooth preparation suitable for painting upon then stuck to the plain side of a stiff card for added support. Miniature cases were made by jewelers and often as decorative as the portraits.
Thomas Hugh Cobb (1863–1944), The Manor, Davies Street, London, by 1944 [1];
Purchased at his posthumous sale, The Well-Known Collection of Fine Miniatures and Enamels, Piqué, Snuff Boxes and Objects of Vertu, Sotheby’s, London, October 12, 1944, lot 262, by “Nyburg,” 1944 [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] Thomas Hugh Cobb, a solicitor and collector of English silver, objects of vertu and portrait miniatures, bequeathed a number of portrait miniatures, including one by Nicholas Hilliard, to the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1944 (P.5-1944). The remainder of his collection, the “property of the late Thomas Hugh Cobb, Esq.” was sold at Sotheby’s by order of his executors.
[2] In the sales catalogue, lot 18 is illustrated and described as “A miniature of a Lady probably by Isaac Oliver, in widow’s robes, with black lace headdress, white lace ruff, her black dress with a string of pearls over her right shoulder, red curtain background, oval, 1 5/8 in.”
The buyer might have been either Henry Naphtalie Nyburg (b. 1909) or Solomon Nathan Nyburg (1866-1950), who ran Art Antique Galleries Ltd. at 16c Grafton Street, Bond Street, London, which was dissolved in 1964. With thanks to Bailey McCulloch for her research on the Nyburgs.
Note that lot 50, Ozias Humphry, Portrait of Mary Sackville, Countess of Thanet, is also in the Starr collection (F58-60/174).
The Well-Known Collection of Fine Miniatures and Enamels, Piqué, Snuff Boxes and Objects of Vertu (London: Sotheby’s, October 12, 1944), 4, (repro.), as A miniature of a Lady.
Art Prices Current: A Record of Sale Prices at the Principal London and Other Auction Rooms, vol. 23 (London: Art Trade Press Ltd., 1945), A8.
Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 6, p. 11, (repro.), as Unknown Lady.
Jill Finsten, Isaac Oliver: Art at the Courts of Elizabeth I and James I (New York: Garland, 1981), no. 151, p. 166, (repro.), as Unknown Lady in Widows’ Weeds.
Roger Ward and Patricia J. Fidler, eds., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection (New York: Hudson Hills Press, in association with Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1993), 175, (repro.).
Blythe Sobol, “Isaac Oliver, Portrait of Lady Sarah Harington, ca. 1606,” 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. 2, ed. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024), https://doi.org/10.37764/8322.5.1108.
