Window mode follows your eyes with your camera, in this browser only: no picture or position leaves your device.
Portrait of Charlotte Bertie, née Warren, 4th Countess of Abingdon
John I Smart (British, 1741–1811)
1778
- Medium
- graphite and wash on laid paper
- Classification
- Portrait Miniature
- Dimensions
- Sheet: 8.5 x 7.5 cm (3 3/8 x 2 15/16 in.); Unframed: 5.8 x 4.8 cm (2 5/16 x 1 7/8 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 if 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 it 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 included Lady Abingdon. Here, Lady Abingdon’s head and shoulders face right. Her brown hair is dressed high on her head, and a strand of pearls is woven through the left side of her coiffure. A veil descends from the top of her head, past her shoulders. She has gray eyes. Compared to his…
