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This meticulously detailed drawing of an unknown gentleman is one of a small number of surviving portraits drawn by the leading portrait miniaturist and draughtsman John Smart on the return journey from India to England in 1795. He left Madras on 27 April and prepared himself for a long journey back to his native England. As the present drawing clearly states, this drawing was one of a small number of commissions undertaken en route. Smart’s reputation was based on his talent as well as his hard work – something of a perfectionist, his miniatures and drawings display a consistent level of superior draughtsmanship, even when executed on board a ship.

When Smart decided to leave India, for reasons unknown in 1795, he was preparing for a journey over four months in duration. He had evidently planned well in advance for his return to London, paying rent on a house in Grafton Street from 1790. The move back to England, after ten years in India, may have been prompted by a desire to re-establish himself as a London portraitist – Smart’s personal life seems to have been largely governed by his professional ambitions. He had, however, left behind two illegitimate children in London, John Smart Junior and Sarah, in the care of the miniaturist Robert Bowyer (c.1758-1834).[1]

Mirroring his journey out to India in April 1785, Smart occupied himself on board the Melville Castle by drawing his fellow passengers and members of the ship’s company. These shipboard drawings can be divided into two groups - those Smart made for his own pleasure and those that were probably commissions.[2] Smart was systematic in recording the date and often the place and sitter’s name on his works, even those drawn at leisure. This drawing of an unknown gentleman corresponds with the latter group of drawings – a drawing so meticulously executed that the sitter could have used it as the basis for an etching if he so wished.[3] Interestingly, all extant drawings taken on the ship ended up in the collections of the artist’s great-grandchildren, along with many other preparatory drawings. This would suggest that, for reasons unknown, the present work was one kept in the artist’s collection until his death.

Smart records that this drawing was taken ‘on board the Melville Castle’. There are only two other extant drawings by Smart produced on board the Melville Castle on this passage[4], both typified by their exceptionally high level of finish and their unusual tromp-l’oeil borders. Another portrait, depicting Major Francis Robson, Deputy Governor of St Helena[5], was also drawn on the passage home, however, it was completed in St. Helena, during a brief stop-over between 15 August and 5 September.[6]

[1] The children were the result of Smart’s relationship with Sarah Midgeley, whom he never married. The return to England may also have been driven by the educational needs of a growing brood of grandchildren – Smart’s only living daughter, Anna Maria, had left India in the autumn of 1794, to return to England with her six children and her nephew by her sister Sophia, who had died in childbirth in 1790.

[2] In 2016, Philip Mould & Co. sold a portrait drawing of Lieutenant Colonel Hamilton Maxwell playing the violin, dated 1785. Maxwell travelled on the ship the Dutton with Smart to Madras that year, and this drawing is a rare survival of one of Smart’s personal records from the journey.

[3] Very few drawings by Smart appear to have been etched, although their appearance, including the parallel lines within the spandrels, would suggest that this was their purpose.

[4] ‘Portrait of a Gentleman, inscribed John Smart delint Septr 1795 on board the Melville Castle East Indiaman’, Christie’s, London, 17 December 1936 (the property of Mrs Busteed, great-granddaughter of John Smart), lot 41; Portrait of Captain John Lambe, 1795, Christie’s, London, 26 November 1937 (By family descent to Mrs Dyer, great-granddaughter of John Smart), Lot 51; Private collection, UK, until 2016 sold Philip Mould and Co.

[5] British Museum [1937,1211.5]

[6] Smart stopped at St. Helena to collect his daughter, Anna Maria Woolf, who had stayed on the Island to deliver a son whilst en route to England.