Portrait of Lord Henry Howard, later 6th Duke of Norfolk

Philip Henry Howard (1801–1883), Corby Castle, Great Corby, Cumbria, England, by June 1865 [1];

With Duveen Brothers, London, by 1912 [2];

Hans Freiherr Reitzes von Marienwert (1877–1935), Vienna, Austria, by 1924–at least 1928 [3];

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, 1958.

Notes

[1] The inscription on the gesso backing ascribing ownership to “P. H. Howard of Corby” identifies the Nelson-Atkins miniature as the Cooper loaned by Philip Henry Howard, Esq. of Corby Castle to the landmark exhibition of miniatures at the South Kensington Museum (later the Victoria and Albert Museum) in June 1865, as Henry Frederick, Earl of Arundel (1608–1652), no. 1396. Howard (1801–1883) was a Whig politician and descendant of Lord William Howard, younger son of Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk (1536–1572), and therefore not a direct descendant of the sitter Henry Howard, Sixth Duke of Norfolk. It is possible that the miniature was inherited through the family or acquired by P. H. Howard’s father Henry Howard (1757–1842), a historian and antiquarian who wrote Indications of Memorials . . . of Persons of the Howard Family, a family history privately printed in 1834.

[2] It is unknown when the Duveens acquired or sold the miniature, but it is illustrated on page 39 of an unpublished stock album along with several other Starr miniatures. It was in their hands by 1912, when they loaned it to International Miniatures Exhibition in Brussels. Duveen Brothers, Miniatures, undated, Special Collections, Series I.A., Box 15, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles.

[3] 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), and its owner was also identified as von Marienwert in 1928 in Jean de Bourgoing, English Miniatures (London: Ernest Benn, Ltd., 1928), pl. 40. Several other miniatures cited on the same page of the Duveen stock album [see 2] 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, which 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, a 1657 portrait of a woman by John Hoskins, which was recently sold as lot 216 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 Heckett. If the Hoskins was acquired at the same time as the Nelson-Atkins Portrait of Henry Howard, which seems likely, those dates could apply to our miniature as well. Finally, Nicholas Dixon’s Portrait of Sir George Wakeham, 1679, illustrated on page 38 of the Duveen stock album, which was also recently sold at part II of the Pohl-Ströher sale at Sotheby’s, July 4, 2019, lot 17, shares a similar provenance, having been owned by Duveen, Marienwart, and Heckett.