Portrait of George Babington, Battalion Surgeon of the 3rd Foot Guards
Framed: 3 7/8 × 2 3/4 × 1/8 inches (9.84 × 6.99 × 0.32 cm)
- 128
Of his five children, John Smart Junior (1777–1809) was the only one to follow Smart Senior’s path in painting. Smart Junior evoked his father’s characteristic style of using an olive background and making artistic choices that were not always flattering to the sitter. This influence is noticeable in Portrait of George Babington (no. 5) with the inclusion of Babington’s creased forehead.
Probably commissioned by the sitter, George Babington (1776–1817), Amboyna, India, 1807–1817 [1];
Probably Charles William Dyson Perrins (1864–1958), Worcester, England, by 1929–1958 [2];
Purchased from his posthumous sale, Important English Portrait Miniatures, The Property of the late C. W. Dyson Perrins, Esq., D.C.L., F.S.A., Sotheby’s, London, December 11, 1958, lot 57, as A Miniature of an Officer, by Leggatt Brothers, London, probably on behalf of Mr. John W. (1905–2000) and Mrs. Martha Jane (1906–2011) Starr, Kansas City, MO, 1958–1971 [3];
Their gift to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1971.
Notes
[1] Babington’s wife Dorothy Metcalfe (1784–1858) probably brought the miniature back to England. She died in Mayfair, Middlesex. Dorothy and George had two sons, who may have inherited the miniature: George William Hopkins Babington (1813–1869) and Cornelius Metcalfe Stuart Babington (1816–1862).
[2] According to Basil Long, British Miniatures (London: Holland Press, 1929), 408: “Mr. Dyson Perrins has a miniature of an officer, signed J S J / 1807.”
[3] The sales catalogue describes the miniature: “A Miniature of an Officer by John Smart Junior, signed and dated 1807, head and shoulders three-quarters dexter, gaze directed at spectator, with short powdered hair and slight side whiskers, wearing a scarlet coat with gold epaulettes, against a stippled grey-brown ground, the reverse with a monogram and a coil of hair on an opalescent enamel ground, 2 7/8 in.”
An annotated sales catalogue is located at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, Miller Nichols Library. The catalogue was most likely annotated by Mr. or Mrs. Starr (although lot 57 is not annotated). Leggatt bought the miniature for 85 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.
Basil Long, British Miniatures (London: Holland Press, 1929), 408.
Catalogue of Important English Portrait Miniatures, The Property of the late C. W. Dyson Perrins, Esq., D.C.L., F.S.A. (London: Sotheby’s, December 11, 1958), 16, as A Miniature of an Officer.
Daphne Foskett, John Smart: The Man and His Miniatures (London: Cory, Adams, and Mackay, 1964), 59.
Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 151, p. 53, (repro.), as Unknown Man.
Maggie Keenan, “John Smart Junior, Portrait of George Babington, Battalion Surgeon of the 3rd Foot Guards, 1807,” 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/10.37764/8322.5.1642.
