Portrait of Lieutenant Robert Bertie, 4th Duke of Ancaster and Kesteven
Framed: 2 × 1 11/16 inches (5.08 × 4.29 cm)
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.
Cosway created large, showy miniatures for aristocratic patrons. He sacrificed truthfulness for glamour, capturing his subjects in gauzy, translucent tones. While his sitters’ faces are carefully painted, loose brushstrokes characterize their garments and hair. Enlarged eyes draw attention to sitters’ faces, and bare ivory emphasizes the paleness of their skin.
One contemporary commentator wrote that Cosway’s miniatures “were not fashionable—they were fashion itself.” His high society clientele often wore his works as bold jewelry.
Cosway employed theatrical tactics to increase his celebrity. After 1785, he signed his miniatures Primarius Pictor Serenissimi Walliae Principis, Latin for Principal Painter to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales.
Possibly the Waldegrave or Burrell families, by 1779 [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] According to George Charles Williamson, Richard Cosway, R.A. (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1905), 115, “In addition to the portrait on this [Ancaster] box a lovely one of Robert, the fourth Duke, belongs to the Hon. Willoughby Burrell, and a replica of it to his father, Lord Gwydyr. Still another belongs to Earl Waldegrave, and was evidently done for the Duke that he might present it to Lady Horatia Walpole, to whom he was engaged. The Duke died unmarried, and this miniature was lost sight of for some years, and its owners did not know whom it represented.” Robert Bertie (1756–1779) was engaged to Lady Anne Horatia Seymour (née Waldegrave, 1762–1801) at the time of his death in 1779. By 1905, a portrait of Bertie by Cosway was owned by Lady Anne’s great grandnephew, William Frederick Waldegrave, 9th Earl Waldegrave (1851–1930), so the portrait may have passed through her hands. Other versions of this portrait were given to Bertie’s sister, Priscilla (1761–1828), who married Sir Peter Burrell, later First Baron Gwydyr (1754–1820). Some of these versions remain in private hands.
Possibly George Charles Williamson, Richard Cosway, R.A. (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1905), 115.
Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 64, p. 25, (repro.), as Robert, Duke of Ancaster.
Maggie Keenan, “Richard Cosway, Portrait of Lieutenant Robert Bertie, 4th Duke of Ancaster and Kesteven, ca. 1779,” 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/10.37764/8322.5.1321.
