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"accession_number": "1941.564",
"share_license_status": "CC0",
"tombstone": "Portrait of Anna Maria Woolf, n\u00e9e Smart, c. 1785. John I Smart (British, 1741\u20131811). Graphite and wash on laid paper; framed: 9.1 x 7.8 cm (3 9/16 x 3 1/16 in.); unframed: 6.7 x 5.4 cm (2 5/8 x 2 1/8 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, The Edward B. Greene Collection, 1941.564",
"current_location": null,
"title": "Portrait of Anna Maria Woolf, n\u00e9e Smart",
"creation_date": "c. 1785",
"creation_date_earliest": 1784,
"creation_date_latest": 1786,
"artists_tags": [
"male"
],
"culture": [
"England, 18th century"
],
"technique": "graphite and wash on laid paper",
"support_materials": [
{
"description": "card",
"watermarks": []
}
],
"department": "Drawings",
"collection": "DR - British",
"type": "Portrait Miniature",
"measurements": "Framed: 9.1 x 7.8 cm (3 9/16 x 3 1/16 in.); Unframed: 6.7 x 5.4 cm (2 5/8 x 2 1/8 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"framed": {
"height": 0.091,
"width": 0.078
},
"unframed": {
"height": 0.067,
"width": 0.054
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": null,
"inscriptions": [
{
"inscription": "Signature: none; inscribed on front of paper at upper right corner: 1[?][?]; inscribed on paper backing, in graphite at left center: Indi; upside down, at left above center: 38; inscribed in brown ink at center, on back of drawing: Mrs Peirce",
"inscription_translation": null,
"inscription_remark": null,
"sortorder": null
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],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [
{
"id": 311503,
"title": "Intimate Images: Portrait Miniatures from Europe and America",
"description": "Intimate Images: Portrait Miniatures from Europe and America. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (March 26-October 17, 1993).",
"opening_date": "1993-03-26T04:00:00"
},
{
"id": 202388,
"title": "Disembodied: Portrait Minatures and their Contemporary Relatives",
"description": "Disembodied: Portrait Minatures and their Contemporary Relatives. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 10, 2013-February 16, 2014).",
"opening_date": "2013-11-10T00:00:00"
}
],
"legacy": [
{
"description": "Royal Amateur Art Society Exhibition of Miniatures, Moncorvo House, London, England, (March 5-8, 1904).",
"opening_date": "1904-03-05T00:00:00"
}
]
},
"provenance": [
{
"description": "Sarah Smart (1781-1853), daughter of the artist by Sarah Midgeley, gifted to Mary Smirke",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "1811-c. 1853",
"sortorder": 1
},
{
"description": "Mary Smirke (d. 1853, Slough); by inheritance to her brother, Sydney Smirke.",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "c. 1853-",
"sortorder": 2
},
{
"description": "Sydney Smirke (1798-1877) by inheritance to his daughter, Mrs. Lange.",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "1853-77",
"sortorder": 3
},
{
"description": "Mrs. Lange (n\u00e9e Smirke, d. 1928), by inheritance to her brother, Sir Edward Smirke.",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "1877-1928",
"sortorder": 4
},
{
"description": "Sir Edward Smirke",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "1928",
"sortorder": 5
},
{
"description": "(Sale: Christie\u2019s, London, December 10,1928, lot 2).",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "December 10,1928",
"sortorder": 6
},
{
"description": "Leo Schidlof (1886-1966), Paris, France, sold to Edward B. Greene",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "1928-1929",
"sortorder": 7
},
{
"description": "Edward B. Greene (1878-1957), Cleveland, OH, gifted to the Cleveland Museum of Art.",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "1929-1941",
"sortorder": 8
},
{
"description": "The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "1941-",
"sortorder": 9
}
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"did_you_know": "After living in India for many years, Anna Maria was en route to England when she was forced to disembark at St. Helena to give birth to her son.",
"description": "Although it is impossible to say whether or not it was always part of the artist\u2019s process to execute a preparatory sketch prior to painting each miniature, we do know that John Smart retained many hundreds of these sketches. A group of preparatory sketches\u2014of which this portrait is one\u2014descended through the Smirke family after Smart\u2019s daughter Sarah gave a sketchbook containing preparatory portrait studies to her friend Mary Smirke, sister of the celebrated Victorian architect Sydney Smirke. This book was probably broken up around 1877 when it was divided between Sydney\u2019s daughters Mary Jemmett and Mrs. Lange, whose portions were both sold at auction in 1928.
This portrait was assigned the historically colorful but fictitious title of \u201cDuchess Christina\u201d at some point after memory of its true identity had been lost. Giving illustrious titles to portraits of unknown sitters was a popular strategy adopted by dealers during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, often applied to miniature portraits and, in particular, to Smart\u2019s sketches of women. Here, the sitter\u2019s head is turned slightly to her left. She has dark brown eyes, rosy cheeks, and long, wavy dark hair falling below her shoulders. She wears a white dress with long sleeves and a ruffled bodice, and a small lozenge-shaped pendant around her neck. She is placed inside a faintly suggested oval, and the background is unpainted. The paper backing\u2014removed in 1993\u2014was inscribed with \u201c38\u201d and \u201cIndi,\u201d which may suggest that the sketch was executed during Smart\u2019s time in India. The inscription that was discovered on the back of the drawing after the paper backing was removed reads, \u201cMrs [or perhaps Miss] Peirce.\u201d Although the inscription appears to be in the artist\u2019s hand, and in the brown ink he used to annotate his preparatory sketches, its relationship to this portrait is unclear.
The sitter is probably Anna Maria, Smart\u2019s eldest daughter by his first wife, whose name is unknown. Anna Maria (1766\u20131813) traveled with her father to India in 1785, sailing from England on April 19 and arriving in Madras on September 6. If the work was executed in India at the time Anna Maria accompanied her father there, the sketch may be dated to around 1785, the year they moved to the subcontinent. Anna Maria would have been around 18 years old. The fact that this portrait is of an older girl who dons a plain, modest dress and wears her hair down suggests an intimacy not found in the type of portraits Smart commonly executed of women wearing fine gowns and elaborately dressed hair.",
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"citations": [
{
"citation": "Cleveland Museum of Art, and Edward Belden Greene. Portrait Miniatures ; The Edward B. Greene Collection. 1951.",
"page_number": "p. 31, no. 42, pl. XIV",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/PortraitMiniatures/page/n61"
},
{
"citation": "Foskett, Daphne. John Smart: the Man and His Miniatures. [London]: Cory, Adams & Mackay, 1964.",
"page_number": "pp. 13, 14, 16, 38\u201340, 76",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "Korkow, Cory, and Jon L. Seydl. British Portrait Miniatures: The Cleveland Museum of Art. 2013.",
"page_number": "Cat. no. 47, pp. 193-195",
"url": ""
}
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"creditline": "The Edward B. Greene Collection",
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{
"id": 3691,
"description": "John I Smart (British, 1741\u20131811)",
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"role": "artist",
"biography": "John Smart is often regarded as the most skilled painter of portrait miniatures at the height of the art form\u2019s popularity in late-eighteenth-century Britain. While the free style and white and blue color palette of his rival Richard Cosway (1742\u20131821) conjured up the glamour of fashionable society, Smart\u2019s attention to minute detail, saturated colors, and frank conveyance of likeness and character attracted a different type of clientele, one who prized these qualities
above Cosway\u2019s homogenized modishness.
Information is limited about Smart\u2019s life and career, so much so that while G. C. Williamson had penned the definitive biographies of Cosway, George Engleheart (1752\u20131829), and Andrew Plimer (1763\u20131837) by 1905, it wasn\u2019t until 1964 that a biography of Smart appeared. Little is known about the artist\u2019s early training beyond evidence suggesting that before the age of fourteen, he was winning prizes from the Society of Arts for his drawings and, like Cosway, was an apprentice in William Shipley\u2019s London school in St. Martin\u2019s Lane. Smart exhibited for several years as an active member and eventually president of the Society of Artists of Great Britain before seeking his fortune as a miniature painter in India, where he lived between 1785 and 1795, hoping to secure patronage from wealthy princes and those
involved in England\u2019s growing trade market. Works from this period are signed with the initial I, signifying India.
Unlike Cosway, an ostentatious showman, Smart lived and worked quietly, settling in London after his return from India and exhibiting at the Royal Academy. His style, which changed little throughout his career, is characterized by a meticulous description of a sitter\u2019s countenance through the use of delicate stippling, often featuring wrinkles, crow\u2019s feet around the eyes, and a slightly upturned mouth that suggests joviality. Unlike his contemporaries Cosway, Engleheart, and Plimer, whose backgrounds most often featured blue and white cloudy skies, Smart painted his backgrounds in varying shades of browns, greens, and grays. The size of the artist\u2019s miniatures expanded over time, measuring around 11/ 2 inches until about 1775, then 2 inches until around 1790, and 3 inches thereafter. Though
highly sought after in his time, Smart\u2019s work grew even more popular among collectors following his death. The Cleveland Museum of Art has a total of twenty-three portraits by Smart: seven gentlemen sitters painted on ivory and sixteen preparatory drawings of men and women. Of the seven miniatures on ivory, two date from 1770, three from
Smart\u2019s years in India, and two after his 1795 return to London.",
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"birth_year": "1741",
"death_year": "1811",
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"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "1941-12-05T00:00:00",
"sortable_date": 1784,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "c. 1785",
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"alternate_titles": [
"Portrait of a Young Girl"
],
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"updated_at": "2026-03-27 00:04:27.224000"
}
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