{
"data": {
"id": 130330,
"accession_number": "1952.95",
"share_license_status": "CC0",
"tombstone": "Self-Portrait, 1802. John I Smart (British, 1741\u20131811). Watercolor on ivory in a gold frame; framed: 7 x 5.7 cm (2 3/4 x 2 1/4 in.); unframed: 6.9 x 5.4 cm (2 11/16 x 2 1/8 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, The Edward B. Greene Collection, 1952.95",
"current_location": "203B British Painting and Decorative Arts",
"title": "Self-Portrait",
"creation_date": "1802",
"creation_date_earliest": 1802,
"creation_date_latest": 1802,
"artists_tags": [
"male"
],
"culture": [
"England, early 19th Century"
],
"technique": "watercolor on ivory in a gold frame",
"support_materials": [],
"department": "Modern European Painting and Sculpture",
"collection": "Mod Euro - Painting 1800-1960",
"type": "Portrait Miniature",
"measurements": "Framed: 7 x 5.7 cm (2 3/4 x 2 1/4 in.); Unframed: 6.9 x 5.4 cm (2 11/16 x 2 1/8 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"framed": {
"height": 0.07,
"height_inch": 2,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.75,
"width": 0.057,
"width_inch": 2,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.25
},
"unframed": {
"height": 0.069,
"height_inch": 2,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.6875,
"width": 0.054,
"width_inch": 2,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.125
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": null,
"inscriptions": [
{
"inscription": "signed left: J S / 1802",
"inscription_translation": null,
"inscription_remark": null,
"sortorder": null
}
],
"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": "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"
},
{
"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"
}
]
},
"provenance": [
{
"description": "Collection of the Artist, John Smart (1741-1811), by inheritance to his son, John James Smart",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "1802-1811",
"sortorder": null
},
{
"description": "John James Smart (1805-1870), by inheritance to his daughter Mary Ann Bose",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "1811-1870",
"sortorder": 2
},
{
"description": "Mary Ann Bose (n\u00e9e Smart, 1856\u20131934), by inheritance to her son William H. Bose",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "1870-1934",
"sortorder": 3
},
{
"description": "William H. Bose (1875-1957)",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "1934-1945",
"sortorder": 4
},
{
"description": "(Sale: Christie's London, December 17, 1945, lot 18).",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "December 17, 1945",
"sortorder": 5
},
{
"description": "Robert H. Rocklliff (d. 1963)",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "1945-1947",
"sortorder": 6
},
{
"description": "(Sale: Sotheby's London, November 11, 1945, lot 119).",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "November 11, 1945",
"sortorder": 7
},
{
"description": "H.E. Backer, dealer, London, England on commission",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "-1948",
"sortorder": 8
},
{
"description": "Dr. C.H. Samuelson, Greenacre, Exeter. England",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "1948-",
"sortorder": 9
},
{
"description": "Edward B. Greene (1878-1957), Cleveland, OH, gifted to the Cleveland Museum of Art",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "-1952",
"sortorder": 10
},
{
"description": "The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "1952-",
"sortorder": 11
}
],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": "John Smart signed this self-portrait with his initials in the lower left along with the date it was made, 1802.",
"early_education_description": null,
"artlens_description": null,
"description": "This self-portrait depicts the artist\u2019s almost full face with blue-gray eyes; gray, curly hair and sideburns; and a ruddy
complexion. In spite of the fact that it was no longer in fashion, the powder on his collar indicates that even in 1802 John Smart continued to powder his hair. He wears a dark blue coat with brass buttons; white stock collar, bow, and frill; and deep yellow waistcoat. Arthur Jaff\u00e9 has argued that the yellow waistcoat also seen in Smart\u2019s portrait in the National Gallery, London, indicates his Whiggish political proclivities. The background of the miniature is yellowish gray, and it is signed at the lower left: \u201cJS / 1802.\u201d The silver-gilt frame is probably original, but the gold monogram JS, placed over an opalescent background, may have been added later.
The portrait was formerly in the collection of William Henry Bose, who was Smart\u2019s great-grandson. The Bose collection of Smart sketches and preparatory studies was sold February 15, 1937, at Christie\u2019s, London, but the self-portrait was retained and lent to the Victoria and Albert Museum. In her biography of Smart, Daphne Foskett notes that in 1913 William Bose received a letter from the Reynolds Galleries in London informing him that \u201cSmart\u2019s miniatures were not then selling quite as well as they formerly did, and that the average price of a male portrait was from \u00a320 to \u00a330 and for a lady, young and good-looking, from \u00a330 to \u00a370.\u201d In 1947, over three decades later, the market had revived, and the self-portrait sold for \u00a3360.
In her Dictionary of British Miniature Painters, Foskett notes that Smart painted nine self-portraits, but she does not list them. Having executed at least nine self-portraits during two decades of his mature career, Smart seemed more invested in recording his changing likeness than most of his miniature-painting contemporaries. This attitude of consistent introspection and careful attention to the conservation of his skills outside of the pressures of a commission is in keeping with his practice of executing and retaining highly finished preliminary studies of his sitters for their portraits. In each of his self-portraits, Smart is conservatively dressed and coiffed, with the ruddy complexion and slightly amused expression found in so many of the portraits he painted. Portraits of Smart by other artists reiterate both the humor
and intensity seen in the self-portraits.",
"external_resources": {
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"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q79912069"
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"citations": [
{
"citation": "Christie, Manson & Woods. Miniatures, Objects of Art and Vertu. 1945.",
"page_number": "Lot 18",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "Sotheby's (Firm). Fine Portrait Miniatures, Enamels and Snuff Boxes. 1947.",
"page_number": "lot 119, pl. VI",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "Cleveland Museum of Art, and Edward Belden Greene. Portrait Miniatures ; The Edward B. Greene Collection. 1951.",
"page_number": "p. 30, no. 34, pl. IX",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "Burchfield, Louise H. \u201cPortrait Miniatures.\u201d The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 41, no. 2 (1954).",
"page_number": "p. 22, 26",
"url": "https://www.jstor.org/stable/25141936"
},
{
"citation": "\u201cThree Paintings Recently Acquired.\u201d Bulletin of the Museum of Fine Arts 52, no. 290 (1954).",
"page_number": "p. 90",
"url": "https://www.jstor.org/stable/4171186"
},
{
"citation": "Jaff\u00e9, Arthur. \u201cJohn Smart, Miniature Painter\u20141741(?)\u20131811: His Life and Iconography.\u201d Art Quarterly XVII, no. 3 (Autumn 1954).",
"page_number": "fig. 10, pp. 249, 251, 254",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "Foskett, Daphne. John Smart: the Man and His Miniatures. [London]: Cory, Adams & Mackay, 1964.",
"page_number": "fi g. 6 (repr.), pl. III",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "Foskett, Daphne. A Dictionary of British Miniature Painters. London: Faber and Faber, 1972.",
"page_number": "vol. 1, pp. 513\u201316; vol. II, no. 840, pl. 336",
"url": ""
},
{
"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. 34, pp. 156-159",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "Cleveland Museum of Art. The CMA Companion: A Guide to the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2014.",
"page_number": "Mentioned and reproduced: P. 197",
"url": ""
}
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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.",
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"birth_year": "1741",
"death_year": "1811",
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"sortable_date": 1802,
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"date_text": "1802",
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"updated_at": "2026-05-29 06:44:10.287000"
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