John Smart

This portraitback to top

Smart’s numerous self-portraits confirm the identity and indicate the date, but the attribution remains uncertain. Smart’s descendants believed NPG 3817 to be by Smart himself [1] and it was acquired by the NPG as a self portrait; the drawing of the hand, together with the composition of the lower half of the picture - ‘in neither of which Smart excelled’ - suggested to Jaffé in 1954 ‘a unique attempt by Smart at a self portrait in oil’. [2] An attribution to L. F. Abbott, first proposed in 1953, [3] is perhaps easier to accept, but remains conjectural

Footnotesback to top

1) Mrs L. Dyer wrote that her mother ‘always told me it was a portrait of himself, painted by himself’ (letter of 23 November 1951; NPG archive).
2) A. Jaffé, 'John Smart, Miniature Painter: his life and iconography', Art Quarterly, XVII, 1954, p 254. D. Foskett, John Smart, 1964, pl.3, also believed it to be a self portrait.
3) Within the NPG, on comparison with other Abbott portraits in the Collection.

Physical descriptionback to top

Blue eyes, white hair, wearing a dark green coat and yellow waistcoat, a porte-crayon in his right hand; a miniature of a lady appears in front of the portfolio, bottom left.

Provenanceback to top

By descent from the artist to his great-granddaughter, Mrs Lilian M. Dyer, Bexhill,¹ from whom purchased 1952.

¹ The descent is illustrated in the Smart family tree printed in D. Foskett, John Smart, 1964, f.p.90, and see p 53.


This extended catalogue entry is from the out-of-print National Portrait Gallery collection catalogue: John Ingamells, National Portrait Gallery: Mid-Georgian Portraits 1760-1790, National Portrait Gallery, 2004, and is as published then. For the most up-to-date details on individual Collection works, we recommend reading the information provided in the Search the Collection results on this website in parallel with this text.

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