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Portrait of Mr. Shippard
John I Smart (British, 1741–1811)
c. 1776
- Medium
- graphite and wash on laid paper
- Classification
- Portrait Miniature
- Dimensions
- Framed: 8.5 x 7.3 cm (3 3/8 x 2 7/8 in.); Unframed: 5.7 x 3.7 cm (2 1/4 x 1 7/16 in.)
- Culture
- England, 18th century
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Drawings
- Credit line
- The Edward B. Greene Collection
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
Although it is impossible to say whether or not it was always part of the artist’s process to execute a preparatory sketch prior to painting each miniature, we do know that John Smart retained many hundreds of these sketches. A group of preparatory sketches—of which this portrait is one—descended through the Smirke family after Smart’s daughter Sarah gave a sketchbook containing preparatory portrait studies to her friend Mary Smirke, sister of the celebrated Victorian architect Sydney Smirke. This book was probably broken up around 1877 when its contents was divided between Sydney’s daughters Mary Jemmett and Mrs. Lange, whose portions were both sold at auction in 1928. G. C. Williamson was the first to suggest that Smart’s 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 include a Mr. Jones, the title formerly given to the sketch here. This designation was applied only to a paper backing that had been attached after the drawing had been removed from the sketchbook. There is no further evidence for this attribution, however. The sketch is of the…
