Portrait of Mary Ann Smith
Framed: 3 1/4 × 2 11/16 inches (8.26 × 6.83 cm)
Exhibition of Miniatures and Other Works by Edward Greene Malbone, 1777–1807, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, February 23–April 21, 1929, no. 71, as Mary Ann (Polly) Smith, 1774–1825.
The Starr Foundation Collection of Miniatures, The Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, December 8, 1972–January 14, 1973, no cat., no. 228, as Mary Ann Smith.
Probably commissioned as a pair by the sitter, Mary Ann Smith (1774–1825) and her sister, Elizabeth Smith (1770–1846), Charleston, SC, by February–April 1802 [1];
Probably to their niece-in-law, Elizabeth Ann Poyas (née Scott, 1792–1877), Charleston, SC, by 1846–1877 [2];
Probably by descent to her daughter, Harriet Smith Foster (née Poyas, 1816–1899), Dorchester County, SC, 1877–1899;
Probably by descent to her daughter, Katherine Perry (née Foster, 1848–1936), Charleston, SC, 1899–1936 [3];
By descent to her daughter and son-in-law, Harriet Foster Haskell (née Perry, 1874–1937) and James Heyward Haskell (1871–1937), Charleston, SC, 1936–1937;
By descent to their daughters, Mary Lemons (née Haskell, 1899–1997) and Katherine Foster McDermott (née Haskell, 1902–1986), joint owners, 1937–at least 1938 [4];
Norvin Hewitt Green (1893–1955), New York, by 1955;
Sold at his posthumous sale, Early American Furniture, Important Miniatures and Prints, Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, October 14–15, 1955, lot 237, as Mary Ann (Polly) Smith [5];
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] Neither Mary Anne nor Elizabeth married nor had children. It is possible that their other sister Catherine Ball Poyas (née Smith, 1768–1836), Charleston, SC, could have received the Nelson-Atkins miniature since it descended through her family line. It appears in the collection of her great granddaughter Katherine Perry in 1929.
[2] Elizabeth Ann Scott was married to Catherine Poyas’s son, Henry Smith Poyas (1787–1824), but he died at the age of 37.
[3] Katherine Foster married Jennings Waring Perry (1846–1886) of Charleston, SC. Katherine and her daughter, Harriet, lent the miniature to Exhibition of Miniatures and Other Works by Edward Greene Malbone, 1777–1807, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, February 23–April 21, 1929.
[4] Mary Lemons (née Haskell) was born in South Carolina but lived with her husband James Hatfield Lemons (1893–1970) in Westchester, New York, in 1940. According to 1940 United States Federal Census, Mamaroneck, Westchester, New York, district 60-102, roll: m-t0627-02805, p. 9B, digitized on Ancestrylibrary.com. Katherine McDermott married Thomas Patrick McDermott (1896–1949) in New York in 1924. Their third daughter, Elizabeth Haskell, died in 1926. “Joint owners in 1938” is according to Ruel Pardee Tolman, The Life and Works of Edward Greene Malbone (New York: New-York Historical Society, 1958), 248.
[5] Decribed in the catalogue as “Mary Ann (Polly) Smith. Edward Greene Malbone, American: 1777–1807. Handsome young woman facing half-right, with chestnut brown hair, wearing a white muslin dress edged on her bosom with a ruffle. Locket frame. In case. (Green Estate). Oval: Height 3 1/8 inches. From J. H. Haskel, Charleston, S. C.”
Catalogue of an Exhibition of Miniatures and Other Works by Edward Greene Malbone, 1777–1807, exh. cat. (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1929), no. 71, as Mary Ann (Polly) Smith, 1774–1825.
Jean Lambert Brockway, “Malbone, American Miniature Painter,” American Magazine of Art 20, no. 4 (April 1929): 188, (repro.), as Mary Ann (Polly) Smith.
Ruel Pardee Tolman, “Newly Discovered Miniatures by Edward Greene Malbone,” The Magazine Antiques 16 (November 1929): 378, as Mary Ann (Polly) Smith.
Early American Furniture, Important Miniatures and Prints (New York: Parke-Bernet Galleries, October 15, 1955), 51, (repro.), as Mary Ann (Polly) Smith.
Ruel Pardee Tolman, The Life and Works of Edward Greene Malbone (New York: New-York Historical Society, 1958), nos. 406–407, pp. 247–48, as The Miss Smiths.
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), 137, (repro.), as Mary Ann Smith.
Martha Jane and John W. Starr, “Collecting Portrait Miniatures,” Antiques 80, no. 5 (November 1961): 440, (repro.), as Mary Ann Smith.
Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Trust, 1971), no. 228, p. 75, (repro.), as Mary Ann Smith.
Ross E. Taggart and George L. McKenna, eds., Handbook of the Collections in The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Missouri, vol. 1, Art of the Occident, 5th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1973), 149, (repro.), as Mary Ann Smith.
Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, “Edward Greene Malbone, Portrait of Mary Ann Smith, February–April 1802,” 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. 1, ed. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024), https://doi.org/10.37764/8322.5.3214.)
