Portrait of King Henry VII
Framed: 1 7/8 × 1 3/16 × 1/8 inches (4.76 × 3.02 × 0.32 cm)
With an unknown owner, by 1950;
Purchased from the unknown owner’s sale, Objects of Vertu Including Ivory and Enamel Boxes, Portrait Miniatures, Limoges Enamel, Carvings by Faberge, Etc., Fine Early English Watches, Sotheby’s, London, April 27, 1950, lot 59, as Henry VII, after Holbein, by Leggatt Brothers, London, probably on behalf of Mr. John W. (1905–2000) and Mrs. Martha Jane (1906–2011) Starr, Kansas City, MO, 1950–1958 [1];
Their gift to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1958.
Notes
[1] According to the sales catalogue, “Various properties” sold lots 14–67. Described in the catalogue as “An Early Miniature of Henry VII, after Holbein, nearly full face, wearing a black cap with a jewel, grey hair falling to a fur stole over a red tunic enriched with gems, blue background, oval, 1 1/2 in.” The annotated catalogue for this sale is located at University of Missouri-Kansas City’s Miller Nichols Library. The annotations are most likely by Mr. or Mrs. Starr. The lot number is circled, with a slash to the left of the lot, and “28F” and “84.” According to an attached price list, Leggatt bought lot 59 for 28 pounds. Archival research has shown that Leggatt Brothers served as purchasing agents for the Starrs. See correspondence between Betty Hogg and Martha Jane Starr, May 15 and June 3, 1950, Nelson-Atkins curatorial files.
Catalogue of Objects of Vertu Including Ivory and Enamel Boxes, Portrait Miniatures, Limoges Enamel, Carvings by Faberge, Etc., Fine Early English Watches (London: Sotheby’s, April 27, 1950), 8, as An early Miniature of Henry VIII, after Holbein.
“The Starr Collection of Miniatures: European and American,” Bulletin (The Nelson Gallery and Atkins Museum) 1, no. 2 (December 1958): 16.
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 Henry VII.
Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 1, p. 10, (repro.), as Henry VII.
Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, “Unknown, Portrait of King Henry VII, late 18th century or later,” 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. 3, ed. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan (Kansas City: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024), https://doi.org/10.37764/8322.5.1687.
