Portrait of a Man
Framed: 1 5/16 × 1 1/8 × 1/16 inches (3.33 × 2.86 × 0.16 cm)
Unknown owner, by 1949 [1];
Purchased from the unknown owner’s sale, Fine Sicilian Jewellery, Objects of Vertu, Fine Portrait Miniatures, Sotheby’s, London, October 27, 1949, lot 118, as A Man, by Leggatt Brothers, London, probably on behalf of Mr.Mr. John W. (1905–2000) and Mrs. Martha Jane (1906–2011) Starr, Kansas City, MO, by 1949–1958 [2];
Their gift to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1958.
Notes
[1] As noted in the Sotheby’s October 27, 1949, sale, “Other Properties” sold lots 70–126.
[2] The annotated catalogue for this sale is located at University of Missouri-Kansas City Miller Nichols Library. The annotations are most likely by Mr. or Mrs. Starr. Lot 118 is annotated in pencil with a checkmark and a circled lot number. “Leggatt” and “15” is written in pen directly below the lot. An attached price list confirms Leggatt purchased lot 118 for £15. The other miniature in lot 118, A Lady by Nathaniel Hone, is also now part of the Starr Collection; see F58-60/73. Archival research indicates that the Starrs purchased many miniatures from Leggatt Brothers, either directly or with Leggatt acting as their purchasing agent.
Catalogue of Fine Sicilian Jewellery, Objects of Vertu, Fine Portrait Miniatures (London: Sotheby’s, October 27, 1949), lot 118, as A Man.
Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 57, p. 23, (repro.), as Unknown Man.
Maggie Keenan, “Richard Crosse, Portrait of a Man, ca. 1765,” 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: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024), https://doi.org/10.37764/8322.5.1350.
