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Portrait of General Keith MacAlister
John I Smart (British, 1741–1811)
c. 1800–1810
- Medium
- watercolor and graphite, heightened with traces of white gouache, on paper
- Classification
- Portrait Miniature
- Dimensions
- Image: 13.2 x 11.4 cm (5 3/16 x 4 1/2 in.); Sheet: 17.4 x 14 cm (6 7/8 x 5 1/2 in.)
- Culture
- England, 18th century
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Drawings
- Credit line
- Bequest of Mrs. A. Dean Perry
- 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 great number were inherited by his son John James Smart, who in turn left them to his daughter Mary Ann Bose. Upon her death in 1934, they were divided between three of her children: William Henry Bose, Lilian Dyer, and Mabel Annie Busteed. General MacAlister is represented in three-quarter view, bust length, and facing the right. His eyes are blue, but the right eye is clouded and lighter in color than the left. There is no sign of isolated damage or fading, confirming that this color difference was among MacAlister’s physical attributes. He wears a brown coat; white, frilled vest edged in black; tall collar; and a white cravat tied in a bow. His closely cropped hair is powdered, and an unidentified rocky landscape through which a small river runs is painted in the background; it probably represents a place of personal significance in Scotland or India, possibly even Seringapatam and the Cauvery River. Smart depicted MacAlister inside of a penciled oval tromp l’oeil…
