Portrait of a Woman
Framed: 1 7/8 × 1 1/2 inches (4.76 × 3.81 cm)
- 128
John Smart—Miniaturist: 1741/2–1811, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, December 9, 1965–January 2, 1966, no cat., as Lady.
The Starr Foundation Collection of Miniatures, The Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, December 8, 1972–January 14, 1973, no cat., no. 140, as Unknown Lady.
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 a Woman.
Unknown owner, by July 24, 1947 [1];
Purchased from the unknown owner’s sale, Oriental Ivories, Etc., Sotheby’s, London, July 24, 1947, lot 107, as A Lady, by H. Harris, 1947 [2];
Mr. John W. (1905–2000) and Mrs. Martha Jane (1906–2011) Starr, Kansas City, MO, by 1965;
Their gift to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1965.
Notes
[1] According to the 1947 sales catalogue, lots 88–108 belonged to “Other Properties.”
[2] According to Art Prices Current (1946–47), “H. Harris” bought lot 107 for £40. See also https://archive.org/details/orientalivorieso00soth/page/18/mode/2up.
Catalogue of Oriental Ivories, Etc. (London: Sotheby’s, July 24, 1947), 11, as A Well-Painted Miniature of a Lady.
Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 140, p. 49, (repro.), as Unknown Lady.
Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, “John Smart, Portrait of a Woman, 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/10.37764/8322.5.1632.
