Portrait of a Woman
Framed: 2 7/8 × 2 7/16 × 1/8 inches (7.3 × 6.19 × 0.32 cm)
Signed Miniatures, Sidney Hand, London, 1924, no. 11 [1].
The Starr Foundation Collection of Miniatures, The Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, December 8, 1972–January 14, 1973, no cat., no. 155, as Unknown Lady.
Notes
[1] The exact dates of the exhibition are unknown.
With Sidney Hand, London, by 1924–1952 [1];
Sold at his posthumous sale, Catalogue of Fine Portrait Miniatures, Objects of Vertu, Gold Boxes, Etc., Sotheby’s, London, November 25, 1952, lot 52, as A Lady [2];
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] Sidney Hand (1877–1952) was a London dealer, who died on May 18, 1952. According to the 1952 sales catalogue, “An Interesting Documentary Collection of Portrait Miniatures mostly signed by the Artists. The Property of a Gentleman (decd.) [Sold by Order of the Executors]” sold lots 1–55. His 1924 “Signed Miniatures” exhibition aligns with the 1952 catalogue description of a collection “mostly signed.” Hand may have had the work as early as 1916, when it was reproduced in The Connoisseur, but this remains unclear.
[2] Described in the catalogue as “A Miniature of a Lady, by William Grimaldi, signed Grimaldi A. R. 1796, head and shoulders, full face, wearing a white bandeau in her light hair, white dress and mauve sash, cloud and sky background, 2 3/4 in.” The Starrs bought multiple miniatures from this sale, including Solomon Alexander Hart, Portrait of Edmund Kean (F58-60/69), and they may have bought the Grimaldi miniature there, too.
The Connoisseur: An Illustrated Magazine for Collectors, ed. C. R. Grundy, 45 (May–August 1916): 209, 228, (repro.), as Miniature of a Lady.
Signed Miniatures, exh. cat. (London: Sidney Hand, 1924), 12, 18, (repro.).
Catalogue of Fine Portrait Miniatures, Objects of Vertu, Gold Boxes, Etc. (London: Sotheby’s, November 25, 1952), 8, (repro.).
Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 155, p. 54, (repro.), as Unknown Lady.
Maggie Keenan, “William Grimaldi, Portrait of a Woman, 1796,” 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. 3, ed. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024), https://doi.org/10.37764/8322.5.1412.
