Portrait of a Woman, Possibly Jane Huck-Saunders
Sheet: 2 3/16 × 2 1/4 inches (5.56 × 5.79 cm)
Framed: 5 × 4 1/2 inches (12.7 × 11.43 cm)
- 128
John Smart and Richard Cosway were the most successful miniature painters working in Britain in the late 1700s, but they worked in dramatically different styles.
Smart created intricately detailed and carefully observed portraits of wealthy merchants. His miniatures’ expressive features and richly textured clothing convey sitters’ personalities and circumstances. Smart often worked from sketches of his subjects, allowing him to produce later versions of his miniatures.
For much of his career, Smart was based in London, but in 1785, he moved to India. He painted there for ten years for both British employees of the East India Company and Indian royals. Works from this period are often inscribed with an “I”.
After his return to London, Smart used his meticulous style to paint larger miniatures, which were in fashion.
Probably John Smart (1741–1811), London, by around 1783–1811;
Probably by descent to his son, John James Smart (1805–1870), London, 1811–1870;
Probably by descent to his daughter, Mary Ann Bose (née Smart, 1856–1934), Edinburgh, 1870–1934 [1];
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] A substantial number of Smart’s sketches were inherited by his son John James Smart (1805–1870) and later passed to the younger Smart’s daughter, Mary Ann Bose (1856–1934). After her death in 1934, the sketches were divided among three of her children: William Henry Bose (1875–1957), Lilian Dyer (1876–1955), and Mabel Annie Busteed (1878–1967). These collections were subsequently sold at auction through Christie’s, London, in December 1936 (Busteed sale), February 1937 (Bose), and November 1937 (Dyer). This preparatory sketch likely followed a similar path and was in one of these three sales; however, due to the unknown identity of the sitter, its provenance remains uncertain.
Ross E. Taggart, ed., Handbook of the Collections in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 4th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1959), 265, as Portrait of a Lady (sketch).
Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 149, p. 52, (repro.), as Unknown Lady.
Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, “John Smart, Portrait of a Woman, Possibly Jane Huck-Saunders, ca. 1777,” 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. 4, ed. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2025), https://doi.org/10.37764/8322.5.1542.
