{
"data": {
"id": 160121,
"accession_number": "1997.82",
"share_license_status": "CC0",
"tombstone": "Portrait of a Woman, c. 1775. John I Smart (British, 1741\u20131811). Gray and red wash over graphite, heightened with white gouache on laid paper; sheet: 5.4 x 4.7 cm (2 1/8 x 1 7/8 in.); secondary support: 5.3 x 4.8 cm (2 1/16 x 1 7/8 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Bequest of Mrs. A. Dean Perry, 1997.82",
"current_location": null,
"title": "Portrait of a Woman",
"creation_date": "c. 1775",
"creation_date_earliest": 1770,
"creation_date_latest": 1779,
"artists_tags": [
"male"
],
"culture": [
"England, 18th century"
],
"technique": "gray and red wash over graphite, heightened with white gouache on laid paper",
"support_materials": [
{
"description": "beige(1) laid paper, discolored to yellow-brown, laid down on light brown wove paper",
"watermarks": []
}
],
"department": "Drawings",
"collection": "DR - British",
"type": "Portrait Miniature",
"measurements": "Sheet: 5.4 x 4.7 cm (2 1/8 x 1 7/8 in.); Secondary Support: 5.3 x 4.8 cm (2 1/16 x 1 7/8 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"sheet": {
"height": 0.054,
"height_inch": 2,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.125,
"width": 0.047,
"width_inch": 1,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.875
},
"secondary support": {
"height": 0.053,
"height_inch": 2,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.0625,
"width": 0.048,
"width_inch": 1,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.875
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": null,
"inscriptions": [
{
"inscription": "verso, in bottom half, in graphite: Anne of / Denmark ; in top half, in graphite: 141 [upside down]\r\ninscribed in graphite on verso of drawing, at top: very dark brown hair / . . . ry . . .; inscribed in brown ink on verso of drawing: to be set[s?] in . . . / and put in a Black / Frame largest . . . / [G . . .\u2019s?] Size",
"inscription_translation": null,
"inscription_remark": null,
"sortorder": null
}
],
"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 (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 9)",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "December 10, 1928",
"sortorder": 7
},
{
"description": "Leo Schidlof (1886-1966), Paris, France, sold to Edward B. Greene",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "1928",
"sortorder": 8
},
{
"description": "Edward B. Greene (1878-1957), Cleveland, OH \n by inheritance to his daughter Helen Perry",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "1929-c. 1957",
"sortorder": 9
},
{
"description": "Helen Perry, (n\u00e9e Greene, 1911-1996), Cleveland, Oh",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [],
"date": "c. 1957-96",
"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
}
],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": "Mrs. A. Dean Perry, who donated this drawing to CMA, is the granddaughter of one of the museum\u2019s founding members, Jeptha Homer Wade II.",
"early_education_description": null,
"artlens_description": null,
"description": "This portrait was assigned the historically colorful but fictitious title of \u201cAnne of Denmark\u201d at some point after memory of its true identity had been lost. Giving illustrious titles to portraits of unknown sitters was a popular strategy adopted by dealers during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, often applied to miniature portraits and, in particular, to Smart\u2019s sketches of women. Only the sitter\u2019s head and neck are drawn, and a low-necked dress is faintly suggested. Her head is turned to the left, and her brown hair is dressed high, with flat curls against the back of her head. A lightly drawn veil falls over the back of the hair and shoulders. The sitter\u2019s sagging jaw line and the lines beneath her blue-green eyes
suggest that she was painted as a mature woman. The sketch is generally faded, 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\u2019s identification has been 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, an inscription in brown ink in the artist\u2019s hand was discovered. The writing appears to be a fragment, created when the small rectangle containing the portrait was cut from a larger sheet. It reads, \u201cto be set[?] in . . . / and put in a Black / Frame largest . . . / [G . . .\u2019s?] Size.\u201d Above this, \u201cvery dark brown hair\u201d is written in graphite.",
"external_resources": {
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},
"citations": [
{
"citation": "Christie, Manson & Woods. Ancient & Modern Pictures and Miniature Portraits. 1928.",
"page_number": "lot 9",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "Foskett, Daphne. John Smart: the Man and His Miniatures. [London]: Cory, Adams & Mackay, 1964.",
"page_number": "pp. 70, 89",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "Korkow, Cory, and Jon L. Seydl. British Portrait Miniatures: The Cleveland Museum of Art. 2013.",
"page_number": "Cat. no. 38, pp. 170-171",
"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": [
"Anne of Denmark"
],
"is_highlight": false,
"updated_at": "2026-05-29 08:18:47.869000"
}
}