{
"data": {
"id": 127229,
"accession_number": "1949.546",
"share_license_status": "CC0",
"tombstone": "Portrait of a Man, 1786. John I Smart (British, 1741\u20131811). Watercolor on ivory in a gold frame; framed: 5.5 x 4.2 cm (2 3/16 x 1 5/8 in.); unframed: 4.9 x 3.7 cm (1 15/16 x 1 7/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, The Edward B. Greene Collection, 1949.546",
"current_location": null,
"title": "Portrait of a Man",
"creation_date": "1786",
"creation_date_earliest": 1786,
"creation_date_latest": 1786,
"artists_tags": [
"male"
],
"culture": [
"England, 18th century"
],
"technique": "watercolor on ivory in a gold frame",
"support_materials": [],
"department": "European Painting and Sculpture",
"collection": "P - British before 1800",
"type": "Portrait Miniature",
"measurements": "Framed: 5.5 x 4.2 cm (2 3/16 x 1 5/8 in.); Unframed: 4.9 x 3.7 cm (1 15/16 x 1 7/16 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"framed": {
"height": 0.055,
"height_inch": 2,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.1875,
"width": 0.042,
"width_inch": 1,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.625
},
"unframed": {
"height": 0.049,
"height_inch": 1,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.9375,
"width": 0.037,
"width_inch": 1,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.4375
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": null,
"inscriptions": [
{
"inscription": "signed lower left: J S / 1786 / I [The initial I indicates a miniature painted in India, where Smart worked between 1785 and 1795.]",
"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 Gallery Rotation (Gallery 202), The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (January 5, 2009 - April 6, 2009).",
"opening_date": "2009-01-05T00:00:00"
}
]
},
"provenance": [
{
"description": "H. Davis, London, England",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": null,
"sortorder": null
},
{
"description": "(H. E. Backer, London, England, sold to Edward B. Greene)",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "Before 1949",
"sortorder": 2
},
{
"description": "Edward B. Greene (1878-1957), Cleveland, OH, gifted to the Cleveland Museum of Art",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "-1949",
"sortorder": 3
},
{
"description": "The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "1949-",
"sortorder": 4
}
],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": "John Smart signed this miniature in the corner with his initials and the date 1786.",
"early_education_description": null,
"artlens_description": null,
"description": "John Smart painted this miniature in India, where he was based in Madras. The unidentified sitter has gray-brown eyes and powdered hair worn en queue. Smart painted the hair with a combination of loose brushstrokes, over which fine white lines are applied to suggest individual hairs and create movement that is carried through the stippling of the face. The manner in which he mixed his colors sometimes resulted in an alteration of the pigment, causing a sitter\u2019s hair to appear pinkish, as can be seen here. A dusting of powder is visible on the sitter\u2019s shoulder. He wears a blue coat featuring a red collar and a high white stock collar with a bow and ruffled jabot, the general effect of which is sometimes taken to suggest a military uniform. However, similar blue and red coats can be seen in portraits of American, British, and French gentlemen, including those of independent means, so this style of dress seems not to have been associated with any particular military or civilian uniform. The sitter\u2019s face is sensitively described with Smart\u2019s trademark stippling.
Highlights over the brow, upper lip, around the eyes, and at the tip of the nose are created less with the addition of white than through the absence of darker stippled pigment. The overall result is a degree of warmth and depth not often found among the portraits of Smart\u2019s contemporaries. The miniature is housed in a simple gold frame.",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q79907081"
],
"internet_archive": [
"https://archive.org/details/clevelandart-1949.546-portrait-of-a-man"
]
},
"citations": [
{
"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, no. 34. 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. 21",
"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. 304",
"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. 30, pp. 146-147",
"url": ""
}
],
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/1949.546",
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"creditline": "The Edward B. Greene Collection",
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{
"id": 3691,
"description": "John I Smart (British, 1741\u20131811)",
"extent": null,
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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.",
"name_in_original_language": null,
"birth_year": "1741",
"death_year": "1811",
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"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "1949-12-23T00:00:00",
"sortable_date": 1786,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "1786",
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"updated_at": "2026-05-29 06:33:27.299000"
}
}