Portrait of Miss Travers, Probably Mary Travers, later Solly
Framed: 3 5/8 × 2 7/8 inches (9.21 × 7.3 cm)
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John Smart—Miniaturist: 1741/2–1811, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, December 9, 1965–January 2, 1966, no cat., as Miss Travers.
The Starr Foundation Collection of Miniatures, The Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, December 8, 1972–January 14, 1973, no cat., no. 136, as Miss Travers.
John Smart: Virtuoso in Miniature, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, December 21, 2024–January 4, 2026, no cat., as Portrait of Miss Travers, Probably Mary Travers, later Solly.
Charles William Dyson Perrins (1864–1958), Worcestershire, by January 29, 1958 [1];
Purchased from his posthumous sale, Important English and Continental Miniatures and Fine Watches, Sotheby’s, London, December 11, 1958, lot 61, as A Young Girl Called Miss Travers, by Leggatt Brothers, London, probably on behalf of Mr. John W. (1905–2000) and Mrs. Martha Jane (1906–2011) Starr, Kansas City, MO, 1958–1965 [2];
Their gift to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1965.
Notes
[1] Dyson Perrins died on January 29, 1958. A label on the miniature’s case verso is inscribed, “PERRINS / COLLECTION” with the number 281.
[2] According to the attached price list, Leggatt bought lot 61 for £340. 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 Important English and Continental Miniatures and Fine Watches (London: Sotheby’s, December 11, 1958), 17, (repro.), as A Young Girl Called Miss Travers.
Daphne Foskett, John Smart: The Man and His Miniatures (New York: October House, 1964), 75.
Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 136, p. 48, (repro.), as Miss Travers.
Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, “John Smart, Portrait of Miss Travers, Probably Mary Travers, later Solly, 1803,” 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/10.37764/8322.5.1624.
