{
"data": {
"id": 160120,
"accession_number": "1997.81",
"share_license_status": "CC0",
"tombstone": "Portrait of a Man, c. 1775. John I Smart (British, 1741\u20131811). Gray, red, and purple wash and graphite on laid paper; sheet: 5.6 x 4.9 cm (2 3/16 x 1 15/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Bequest of Mrs. A. Dean Perry, 1997.81",
"current_location": null,
"title": "Portrait of a Man",
"creation_date": "c. 1775",
"creation_date_earliest": 1770,
"creation_date_latest": 1779,
"artists_tags": [
"male"
],
"culture": [
"England, 18th century"
],
"technique": "gray, red, and purple wash and graphite on laid paper",
"support_materials": [
{
"description": "beige(1) laid paper, partially discolored to beige-brown, laid down on light brown wove paper",
"watermarks": []
}
],
"department": "Drawings",
"collection": "DR - British",
"type": "Portrait Miniature",
"measurements": "Sheet: 5.6 x 4.9 cm (2 3/16 x 1 15/16 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"sheet": {
"height": 0.056,
"height_inch": 2,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.1875,
"width": 0.049,
"width_inch": 1,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.9375
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
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"copyright": null,
"inscriptions": [
{
"inscription": "VERSO OF SECONDARY SUPPORT, in top half, in graphite: Mr Batson ; in top half, in graphite: 158 [upside down]\r\n\r\ninscribed on back of drawing, in graphite: . . . Bracelet / . . . pring to . . . / cloth cape . . . / . . . ",
"inscription_translation": null,
"inscription_remark": null,
"sortorder": null
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],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [
{
"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": "John Smart (1741-1811); by inheritance to his daughter Sarah Smart",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "Until 1811",
"sortorder": 1
},
{
"description": "Sarah Smart (1781-1853), daughter of the artist by Sarah Midgeley, gifted to Mary Smirke",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "1811-c. 1853",
"sortorder": 2
},
{
"description": "Mary Smirke (d. 1853, Slough), by inheritance to her brother Sydney Smirke",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "c. 1853",
"sortorder": 3
},
{
"description": "Sydney Smirke (1798-1877). by inheritance to his daughter Mrs. Lange",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "1853-77",
"sortorder": 4
},
{
"description": "Mrs. Lange (n\u00e9e Smirke, d. 1928). by inheritance to her brother Edward Smirke",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "1877-1928",
"sortorder": 5
},
{
"description": "Edward Smirke",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "1928",
"sortorder": 6
},
{
"description": "Sale: Christie\u2019s, London, December 10, 1928 (lot 8)",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "December 10, 1928",
"sortorder": 7
},
{
"description": "Leo Schidlof (1886\u20131966), Paris, France, sold to Edward B. Greene",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "1928",
"sortorder": 8
},
{
"description": "Edward B. Greene (1878\u20131957), Cleveland, OH, by inheritance to his daughter Helen Perry",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "1928-c. 1957",
"sortorder": 9
},
{
"description": "Helen Perry (n\u00e9e Greene, 1911\u20131996, Cleveland).",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "c. 1957-1996",
"sortorder": 10
},
{
"description": "Estate of Mrs. A. Dean Perry (Helen Perry), gifted to the Cleveland Museum of Art",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "1996-97",
"sortorder": 12
},
{
"description": "The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "1997-",
"sortorder": 13
}
],
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"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": "Edward B. Greene gave his renowned collection of portrait miniatures to the Cleveland Museum of Art primarily during the 1940s, while drawings such as this came only later, donated by his daughter.",
"early_education_description": null,
"artlens_description": null,
"description": "G. C. Williamson was the first to suggest that Smart\u2019s sketches were well known and that they were preparatory studies for the painted miniatures. Williamson listed the names of sitters from the sketches known to him at the time, and they included Mr. Batson (the identification formerly given to the sitter in this portrait). His head and shoulders face left. He has blue-green eyes and dark eyebrows and wears his powdered hair en queue. His coat has a narrow collar, under which he dons a high collar and frilled vest. A band of black around his neck hints at perhaps another collar, a waistcoat, or a ribbon from which an undesignated ornament hangs. The color of his attire is not suggested, and the background is unpainted. The finished ivory miniature for which this drawing was presumably a preparatory sketch has not yet been discovered. The sitter has been known as Mr. Batson at least since it was so catalogued in the 1928 Smirke sale. This appellation is based on a later inscription in graphite on the verso of the paper backing. When the paper backing was removed from the back of the drawing in 2011, a faint, partly legible inscription was discovered: \u201c. . . Bracelet / . . . pring to . . . / cloth cape . . . / . . .\u201d",
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"citations": [
{
"citation": "Christie, Manson & Woods. Ancient & Modern Pictures and Miniature Portraits. 1928.",
"page_number": "lot 8",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "Foskett, Daphne. John Smart: the Man and His Miniatures. [London]: Cory, Adams & Mackay, 1964.",
"page_number": "pp. 62, 89",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "Korkow, Cory, and Jon L. Seydl. British Portrait Miniatures: The Cleveland Museum of Art. 2013.",
"page_number": "Cat. no. 37, pp. 167-169",
"url": ""
}
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"creditline": "Bequest of Mrs. A. Dean Perry",
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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.",
"name_in_original_language": null,
"birth_year": "1741",
"death_year": "1811",
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"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "1997-06-02T00:00:00",
"sortable_date": 1770,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "c. 1775",
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"alternate_titles": [
"Mr. Batson"
],
"is_highlight": false,
"updated_at": "2026-05-29 08:18:48.242000"
}
}