Portrait of a Man (1786): Art, History and Details

Portrait of a Man (1786) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is John I Smart (British, 1741–1811).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

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’s hair to appear pinkish, as can be seen here. A dusting of powder is visible on the sitter’s 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’s face is sensitively described with Smart’s 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’s contemporaries. The miniature is housed in a simple gold frame.

Object facts

• Title: Portrait of a Man
• Date: 1786
• Creator attribution: John I Smart (British, 1741–1811)
• Culture: England, 18th century
• Type: Portrait Miniature
• Technique: watercolor on ivory in a gold frame
• Dimensions: 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.)
• Collection: P - British before 1800
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1949.546

A detail from the museum

John Smart signed this miniature in the corner with his initials and the date 1786.

Collection credit

The Edward B. Greene Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art. Portrait Miniatures: The Edward B. Greene Collection. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1951.
• 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.
• 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.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.