1785
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Portrait of Anna Maria Woolf, née Smart is a 1785 unspecified by John Smart, a Rococo painting work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
A woman in a white dress and blue sash looks straight at you. Her hair is powdered, her cheeks softly pink. This tiny portrait was likely a practice sketch—John Smart kept hundreds of them. He painted miniatures, often no bigger than a playing card, for wealthy clients. The fine lines suggest he worked fast, maybe in one sitting. To see more small-scale portraits like this, look up England, 18th century.
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 it was divided between Sydney’s daughters Mary…
After living in India for many years, Anna Maria was en route to England when she was forced to disembark at St. Helena to give birth to her son.
Read the full account in the museum source.
John Smart (1 May 1741 – 1 May 1811) was an English painter who specialised in portrait miniatures. He was a contemporary of Richard Cosway, George Engleheart, William Wood and Richard Crosse.
See the richer artist page
