id: 160114 accession number: 1997.78 share license status: CC0 url: https://clevelandart.org/art/1997.78 updated: 2023-03-15 15:46:30.178000 Portrait of Miss Mary Tadman, 1809. John I Smart (British, 1741–1811). Watercolor and graphite, heightened with traces of white gouache on paper; sheet: 15.4 x 13.4 cm (6 1/16 x 5 1/4 in.); image: 14.2 x 12.2 cm (5 9/16 x 4 13/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Bequest of Mrs. A. Dean Perry 1997.78 title: Portrait of Miss Mary Tadman title in original language: series: series in original language: creation date: 1809 creation date earliest: 1809 creation date latest: 1809 current location: creditline: Bequest of Mrs. A. Dean Perry copyright: --- culture: England, 18th century technique: watercolor and graphite, heightened with traces of white gouache on paper department: Drawings collection: DR - British type: Portrait Miniature find spot: catalogue raisonne: --- CREATORS * John I Smart (British, 1741–1811) - artist John Smart is often regarded as the most skilled painter of portrait miniatures at the height of the art form’s popularity in late-eighteenth-century Britain. While the free style and white and blue color palette of his rival Richard Cosway (1742–1821) conjured up the glamour of fashionable society, Smart’s 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’s homogenized modishness.
Information is limited about Smart’s life and career, so much so that while G. C. Williamson had penned the definitive biographies of Cosway, George Engleheart (1752–1829), and Andrew Plimer (1763–1837) by 1905, it wasn’t until 1964 that a biography of Smart appeared. Little is known about the artist’s 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’s London school in St. Martin’s 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’s 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’s countenance through the use of delicate stippling, often featuring wrinkles, crow’s 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’s 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’s 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’s years in India, and two after his 1795 return to London. --- measurements: Sheet: 15.4 x 13.4 cm (6 1/16 x 5 1/4 in.); Image: 14.2 x 12.2 cm (5 9/16 x 4 13/16 in.) state of the work: edition of the work: support materials: description: wove paper (discolored to light brown) watermarks: inscriptions: inscription: signed, lower right, in gray watercolor: John Smart pinxit / Novr. 1809 ; by artist, lower left, in gray watercolor: Miss Mary Tadman ; VERSO, upper left, in graphite: B/8 translation: remark: --- CURRENT EXHIBITIONS title: Disembodied: Portrait Minatures and their Contemporary Relatives opening date: 2013-11-10T00:00:00 Disembodied: Portrait Minatures and their Contemporary Relatives. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (November 10, 2013-February 16, 2014). --- LEGACY EXHIBITIONS --- PROVENANCE John Smart (1741-1811); by inheritance to his son John James Smart date: Until 1811 footnotes: citations: John James Smart (1805-1870); by inheritance to his daughter Mary Ann Bose date: 1811-70 footnotes: citations: Mary Ann Bose (née Smart, 1856-1934), by inheritance to her daughter Lilian Mary Dyer date: 1870-1934 footnotes: citations: Lilian Mary Dyer (née Bose, 1876-1955), great-granddaughter of the artist. date: 1934-37 footnotes: citations: Sale: Christie’s, London, November 26, 1937 (lot 42) date: November 26, 1937 footnotes: citations: (Colnaghi, London) date: After 1937 footnotes: citations: Edward B. Greene (1878-1957), Cleveland, OH; by inheritance to his daughter Helen Perry date: Before 1957 footnotes: citations: Helen Perry (née Greene, 1911-1996), Cleveland, OH date: c. 1957-96 footnotes: citations: Estate of Mrs. Helen Perry; gifted to the Cleveland Museum of Art date: 1996-97 footnotes: citations: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH date: 1997- footnotes: citations: --- fun fact: This drawing was passed on through the generations of the artist John Smart's family until 1937 when his great-granddaughter sold it. digital description: wall description: Mary Tadman’s head and shoulders face right. Her eyes are brown, and she wears a necklace of small pearls and a drop pearl earring. She wears her dark brown hair high in a classically inspired bun, with a braid across the hairline and many curls falling over her forehead and in front of her ears. Her white dress is delicately embroidered at the edges along the bust and is tied at the empire style waist, with a small pin fastened to the front. The translucent
white sleeves worn beneath the dress are probably made of muslin and detachable, since they do not appear in the ivory version of the portrait. Detachable sleeves were popular during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and enabled a dress to function as day- and eveningwear. The nature of this work as a finished drawing rather than exclusively a preparatory sketch for a miniature on ivory is evident in the degree of finish of the sitter’s clothing, heightened with white gouache and painted to the elaborated penciled oval border.
In December 1809, the year this drawing was executed, Mary Tadman (1786–1862) married Major William Jolliffe Eldridge. He died in 1818 in Poona, India, and three years later, his widow married Colonel Daniel Hutchins Bellasis (1785–1836), with whom she had two children: Flora and Augustus Fortunatus. Mary lived for nearly two decades in India, where she was a celebrated beauty, and where her second marriage into the militarily distinguished Bellasis family seems to have secured her presence in high society. On the occasion of her marriage in 1821, she wrote her spinster sister, “I forgot I have not told you a word of my marriage, which by the by was the grandest affair known in Bombay, I am almost tired of the subject—visits and congratulations, etc. The Governor and Staff went with me to Church . . . and all the people of any consequence in Bombay about 100 came to a Breakfast at Randall Lodge—since which it has been one constant scene of gaiety. Last week, pity me when I tell you, how I was obliged to exert myself—we gave a dinner party to 40 people. The Governor’s family . . . and all the Big Wigs who gave me parties—the same evening 160 came at ten to a dance—afterwards a supper very splendid I assure you.”
A related ivory version of this miniature is in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, signed and dated at the lower left: “J S / 1809.” While Miss Tadman’s coiffure, countenance, jewelry, and dress are identical to the Cleveland sketch, in this portrait she wears an elaborate black and red, flowered Indian shawl with white border over her white dress, the under-sleeves omitted. Indian shawls, particularly those from Kashmir, were extremely expensive signifiers of social status in India and Europe, and by the end of the eighteenth century, they often formed part of the trousseau of a wealthy French or English bride. The shawls were particularly fashionable worn in contrast with the high-waisted gauzy white dresses of the Empire period. While many portraits and miniatures from the early nineteenth century depict women conspicuously displaying their Indian shawls, Miss Tadman wears hers in a manner not often seen in European portraits: across one shoulder and around the waist, like a sari. Mary and William Eldridge wed in December 1809, one month after Smart signed this sketch. Because Smart depicted Miss Tadman during her engagement, the shawl worn in the finished ivory portrait may have been a gift from her betrothed, who had been stationed in Bombay in 1809. While appropriate for a half-length portrait, the under-sleeves were probably deemed unnecessary for the miniature, which shows little of the arm and instead depicts the sitter more formally, wrapped in her shawl.
The existence of a larger, finished drawing as well as a miniature on ivory suggests that the finished drawing may have served a variety of roles, while also implying that another preparatory sketch for both may exist. At nearly twice the size of the ivory, Cleveland’s drawing is not likely to have been the sole preparatory exercise for the finished miniature. There is no question that as a young bride-to-be, Miss Tadman was thinking carefully about how she wished to be represented at a pivotal moment in her life, and that a single portrait was insufficient to accommodate all of the accoutrements that were of significance to her. The neo-Grec coiffure, au courant empire waist dress with detachable sleeves, pearl parure, ornamental pin, and costly shawl communicate clearly the social ambitions to which her
biography is also a testament. --- RELATED WORKS --- CITATIONS Christie, Manson & Woods. Ancient and Modern Pictures and Drawings. 1937. page number: lot 42 url: Foskett, Daphne. John Smart: the Man and His Miniatures. [London]: Cory, Adams & Mackay, 1964. page number: pp. 74, 88 url: Korkow, Cory, and Jon L. Seydl. British Portrait Miniatures: The Cleveland Museum of Art. 2013. page number: Cat. no. 50, pp. 204-207 url: --- IMAGES web: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1997.78/1997.78_web.jpg print: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1997.78/1997.78_print.jpg full: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1997.78/1997.78_full.tif