Portrait of a Man
Sheet: 2 × 1 7/8 inches (5.08 × 4.76 cm)
Framed: 5 × 4 1/2 inches (12.7 × 11.43 cm)
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John Smart (1741–1811), London and Madras, India, by around 1775–1811;
By descent to his son, John James Smart (1805–1870), London, 1811–1870;
By descent to his daughter, Mary Ann Bose (née Smart, 1856–1934), 1870–1934;
By descent to her daughter, Lilian Mary Dyer (née Bose, 1876–1955), 1934–1937;
Purchased from her sale, Sketches and Studies for Miniature Portraits by John Smart . . . the Property of Mrs. Dyer, Great-Granddaughter of the Artist, Christie’s, London, November 26, 1937, lot 1, as one of five Portraits of Gentlemen, by Thomas Agnew, 1937 [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 the lot description, “Portrait of Mr. Skrine, in mauve coat; Portrait of Mr. Murray; and Five other Portraits of Gentlemen—(seven).”
Sketches and Studies for Miniature Portraits by John Smart . . . the Property of Mrs. Dyer, Great-Granddaughter of the Artist (London: Christie’s, November 26, 1937), 3, as one of five Portraits of Gentlemen.
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 Man (sketch).
Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 148, p. 52, (repro.), as Unknown Man.
Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, “John Smart, Portrait of a Man, ca. 1775,” 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/10.37764/8322.5.1574.
