Fig. 1. John Smart, English (1741-1811). Portrait of Muhammad Ali Khan Wallajah, Nawab of Arcot and the Carnatic, 1788. Watercolor over graphite on ivory, 2 1/8 x 1 3/4 in. (5.4 x 4.5 cm). The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. John W. Starr, F71-32. Image courtesy of Nelson-Atkins Digital Production & Preservation.
Few artists captured the faces—and ambitions—of a rising class as compellingly as John Smart (1741-1811). One of Britain’s foremost portrait miniaturists, Smart painted with exceptional precision and realism at a time when flattery and artifice often ruled the genre. His jewel-like portraits documented the expanding middle and military classes of the eighteenth century—individuals who, like Smart himself, came from modest origins and sought recognition in a rapidly changing world.
Unlike his better-known contemporary and sometime rival Richard Cosway, whose portraits were idealized visions tailored for the court, Smart painted his sitters with clarity and honesty. His clients were often East India Company officers, as well as colonial administrators, merchants, and their families. From the porcelain-like softness of his early London portraits to the richly colored likenesses he painted in Madras (present-day Chennai) from 1785 to 1795, including the Muhammad Ali Khan Wallajah, Nawab of Arcot and the Carnatic, (Fig. 1) Smart developed a style of remarkable anatomical accuracy and expressive insight.
Kansas City is uniquely placed to tell this story. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art holds the largest collection of Smart’s work in the world—including signed and dated examples from nearly every year of his career. Thanks to the generosity of Martha Jane Phillips and John W. “Twink” Starr, who began collecting in the 1930s, the museum now stewards a near-complete chronology of Smart’s evolving style. For the first time since 1965, these works are on view in the exhibition John Smart: Virtuoso in Miniature, in gallery 128, through January 4, 2026.
Among the exhibition highlights is a spectacular 1793 self-portrait—one of only nine known to exist—created during Smart’s tenure in India (Fig. 2). Its reverse-profile pose, crisp draftsmanship, and commanding size reflect an artist deeply attuned to the expressive power of likeness.
To learn more, explore our newly published Starr Collection of Portrait Miniatures digital catalogue, co-authored by myself, Blythe Sobol, and Maggie Keenan. It offers new research on Smart and his sitters, along with essays exploring the full breadth of this extraordinary collection—from the 1600s to the 1900s.
–Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, Ph.D., Louis L. and Adelaide C. Ward Senior Curator of European Art
