{
"data": {
"id": 121286,
"accession_number": "1942.1156",
"share_license_status": "CC0",
"tombstone": "Portrait of Lieutenant General Daniel Burr, 1799. John I Smart (British, 1741\u20131811). Watercolor on ivory in a gold frame with glazed hair reverse; framed: 8.8 x 7.2 cm (3 7/16 x 2 13/16 in.); sight: 8.4 x 6.8 cm (3 5/16 x 2 11/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, The Edward B. Greene Collection, 1942.1156",
"current_location": null,
"title": "Portrait of Lieutenant General Daniel Burr",
"creation_date": "1799",
"creation_date_earliest": 1799,
"creation_date_latest": 1799,
"artists_tags": [
"male"
],
"culture": [
"England, 18th century"
],
"technique": "watercolor on ivory in a gold frame with glazed hair reverse",
"support_materials": [],
"department": "European Painting and Sculpture",
"collection": "P - British before 1800",
"type": "Portrait Miniature",
"measurements": "Framed: 8.8 x 7.2 cm (3 7/16 x 2 13/16 in.); Sight: 8.4 x 6.8 cm (3 5/16 x 2 11/16 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"framed": {
"height": 0.088,
"height_inch": 3,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.4375,
"width": 0.072,
"width_inch": 2,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.8125
},
"sight": {
"height": 0.084,
"height_inch": 3,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.3125,
"width": 0.068,
"width_inch": 2,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.6875
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
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"copyright": null,
"inscriptions": [
{
"inscription": "signed lower right: J S / 1799 ",
"inscription_translation": null,
"inscription_remark": null,
"sortorder": null
}
],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [
{
"id": 335553,
"title": "John Smart - Miniaturist",
"description": "John Smart - Miniaturist. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO (organizer) (December 9-31, 1965).",
"opening_date": "1965-12-09T05:00:00"
},
{
"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": "Main European Rotation (Gallery 202), The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (January 30, 2012 - July 23, 2012). [Verso on display]",
"opening_date": "2012-01-30T00:00:00"
},
{
"description": "Royal Academy of Art, London, England (1799).",
"opening_date": null
}
]
},
"provenance": [
{
"description": "Benjamin Nathan, London, England",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "Before 1930",
"sortorder": 1
},
{
"description": "(Leo Schidlof, Paris, France, sold to Edward B. Greene)",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "-1930",
"sortorder": 2
},
{
"description": "Edward B. Greene (1878-1957), Cleveland, OH, gifted to the Cleveland Museum of Art",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "1930-1942",
"sortorder": 3
},
{
"description": "The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "1942-",
"sortorder": 4
}
],
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"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": "The verso or back side contains gilt initials DB and an intricate pattern of braided hair.",
"early_education_description": null,
"artlens_description": null,
"description": "Daniel Burr (1750\u20131828) is depicted here as colonel of the 10th Madras Native Infantry. He joined the East India Company in 1767 as a cadet, became an ensign in 1768, a colonel in 1797, and achieved the rank of major general in 1805. The work is signed and dated \u201cJS / 1799,\u201d indicating that John Smart painted Burr while the officer was back in England on furlough between July 30, 1798, and April 2, 1799. Diarist Joseph Farington noted in 1798 that Smart was charging 25 guineas for his portrait miniatures and making from \u00a3500 to \u00a3600 a year. By comparison, George Engleheart (1752\u20131829) during this period was charging 12 to 15 guineas for his portrait miniatures, and even in the 1780s, Richard Cosway (1742\u20131821) was known to charge between 20 and 30 guineas.
This work was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1799 (no. 784) as \u201cPortrait of Colonel Burr.\u201d It was formerly in the collection of Benjamin Nathan, a wealthy London goldsmith and diamond dealer whose heirs did not wish to retain the miniature and sold it upon his death. Here, Daniel Burr has a ruddy complexion, gray hair, and brown eyes. He wears a red military coat, with dull orange velvet facings, over a jabot with a high white collar and frills. On his left shoulder is a white, fringed epaulet with two gold stars. The background is mottled gray. The miniature is housed in a gold frame with a gold monogram DB and an arrangement of dark brown hair in a medallion on the back. At slightly over 3 inches, this miniature is larger than was customary for Smart during his time in India; it was obviously painted later, when Smart and the officer had returned to England. Smart also painted the miniature portrait of Burr\u2019s first wife, Lucy (n\u00e9e Parry).
A second portrait of Burr was executed by Smart in 1803 and sold at Christie\u2019s, London, in 2009. This version is signed with initials and dated: \u201cJS / 1803.\u201d Burr\u2019s hair is worn \u00e0 l\u2019antique, and his uniform includes a gold epaulet with two star rank badges and the Honourable East India Company\u2019s coat of arms. Burr occupied the rank of colonel in both the 1799 and 1803 portraits, but the uniform differs in the latter because in 1801 the facings of the 10th Madras Native Infantry uniform were altered to red, and rank badges were added to the now gold epaulets. Curiously, Burr appears younger in the 1803 portrait than in the 1799 version, in which his crow\u2019s feet and sagging jowls are more pronounced. The 1803 portrait of Burr was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1811 (no. 637), the year Smart died. A sketch after Smart of Burr was executed by R. Greaves, and a three-quarter length portrait by Sir Martin Archer Shee was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1825 (no. 146).",
"external_resources": {
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],
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"https://archive.org/details/clevelandart-1942.1156-portrait-of-lieutena"
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"citations": [
{
"citation": "Royal Academy of Arts (Great Britain). The Exhibition of the Royal Academy, M, DCC, XCIX. The Thirty-First. London: Printed by J. Cooper, printer to the Royal Academy, 1799.",
"page_number": "no. 34",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "Cleveland Museum of Art. Portrait Miniatures: The Edward B. Greene Collection. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1951.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 30-31, no. 37, pl. IX",
"url": "https://archive.org/details/PortraitMiniatures/page/n55"
},
{
"citation": "Smart, John, and Rose E. Taggart. John Smart - Miniaturist, 1741/42-1811: Starr Collection of Consecutively Dated Miniatures and Special Loan Exhibition : William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art, Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Missouri, Decmeber 9, 1965 to January 2, 1966. Kansas City, Mo: The Gallery, 1966.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: cat no. 34",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Cleveland Museum of Art, and Alan Chong. European & American Painting in the Cleveland Museum of Art: A Summary Catalogue. Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1993.",
"page_number": "p. 305",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "Korkow, Cory, and Dario Robleto. Disembodied: Portrait Miniatures and Their Contemporary Relatives. 2013.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p.81",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Korkow, Cory, and Jon L. Seydl. British Portrait Miniatures: The Cleveland Museum of Art. 2013.",
"page_number": "Cat. no. 33, pp. 153-155",
"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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"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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"sortable_date": 1799,
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"updated_at": "2026-05-29 06:14:57.957000"
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