Portrait of George Gordon, Lord Byron
Framed: 5/8 × 9/16 inches (1.59 × 1.43 cm)
Possibly George E. Butcher and Swann, Ltd., Nottinghamshire, England, before 1958 [1];
Purchased by 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] This miniature came enclosed in an oval-shaped red and gilt leather jewelry case fitted for a stickpin stamped with the label of George E. Butcher & Swann, Artistic Jewellers, 9 Market Street, Nottinghamshire, England. It is possible that the Essex miniature was purchased from Butcher and Swann by the Starrs or a previous owner sometime in the twentieth century, but we are unable to verify this. Butcher and Swann appears to have specialized in watches, clocks, and fine jewelry.
Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 208, p. 70 (repro.), as Lord George Gordon Byron.
Blythe Sobol with Cara Nordengren, “William Essex, Portrait of George Gordon, Lord Byron, 1859,” 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/10.37764/8322.5.1402.
