John Smart, Portrait of Alexander James Dallas, ca. 1780

Chicago:

Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, “John Smart, Portrait of Alexander James Dallas, ca. 1780,” catalogue entry in Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, Blythe Sobol, and Maggie Keenan, The Starr Collection of Portrait Miniatures, 1500–1850: The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, vol. 4, ed. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2025), https://doi.org/10.37764/8322.5.1563.

MLA:

Marcereau DeGalan, Aimee. “John Smart, Portrait of Alexander James Dallas, ca. 1780,” catalogue entry. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, Blythe Sobol, and Maggie Keenan. The Starr Collection of Portrait Miniatures, 1500–1850: The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, edited by Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, vol. 4, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2025. doi: 10.37764/8322.5.1563.

See the artist’s biography in volume 4.

This preparatory sketch and the related watercolor miniature on ivory (Fig. 1, F65-41/2) represent the only pair of its kind in the Starr collection of portrait miniatures. While John Smart occasionally made standalone drawings that he signed and dated, most served as preparatory sketches or aide-mémoires for future works on ivory. Such is the case with the present sketch, inscribed on the verso in Smart’s hand “Mr. Dallas of Jamaica,” and the finished miniature.¹ The sitter is almost certainly Alexander James Dallas (1759–1817), who was born in Kingston, Jamaica, as the son of a Scottish immigrant, Dr. Robert Charles Dallas, and Sarah Elizabeth (Cormack) Hewitt.² Educated at Kensington School and through private tutors, Alexander Dallas eventually studied law. Financial difficulties curtailed his study, and he briefly pursued a career in the mercantile industry before returning to law, a career in which he made a lasting impact.³

Described as an “arrogant, impetuous young man” by Arabella “Maria” Smith (1761–1837), a childhood friend of his younger sister Henrietta Charlotte,⁴ Dallas quickly won Smith’s heart. By the time she was fifteen, they were madly in love. Their union was forbidden due to her young age.⁵ Dallas bided his time for a few years and left for Jamaica without her in the spring of 1780, only to return unexpectedly later that summer with his sister, who planned to stay in London with her new husband.⁶ Dallas rekindled his romance with Smith, and they married on September 4, 1780.⁷ The couple moved to Jamaica soon thereafter, where Dallas practiced law. The tropical climate proved difficult for the new Mrs. Dallas, however, and the couple contemplated returning to London or moving to the United States. They chose the latter, where Dallas had been admitted to the bar, setting sail on April 10, 1783.⁸ The timeline is crucial for dating the present sketch and related finished miniature and reveals something about Smart’s practice. Dallas likely sat for his portrait sketch in London in 1780, before returning to Jamaica. In 1782, the inscribed date of the ivory miniature, Dallas must have requested that the miniature be made from the sketch, possibly as a keepsake for his sister, who was back in London, or for his mother, who remained in Jamaica until her death in 1782.

The sketch and the miniature present a young Dallas around age twenty, about to embark on a new adventure, full of confidence and hope for a successful future. He appears in three-quarters profile and wears a dark gray coat with a buff collar over a high white stock collar and a green-and-white ruffled jabot. Dallas wears his powdered hair en queue, painted in a combination of gestural brushstrokes, over which Smart added individual white lines along the edges to lend vitality and movement. Smart’s color choices, and the way in which he mixed them to form nuanced tones, occasionally resulted in a later alteration of the pigment, causing his sitter’s hair to appear pinkish, as evidenced here. Similarly, Dallas’s eye color has shifted due to color fade or alteration. A period account by one of the sitter’s sons noted that his father had large blue eyes, not the amber eyes seen today in both the sketch and finished miniature.

With age and experience, Dallas evolved from an impetuous and arrogant youth to an “agreeable friendly man.”⁹ He led a high‑profile life in American politics and served his adopted country with distinction. He was appointed Secretary of State in 1796, served as United States District Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania from 1801 until 1814, and was named Secretary of the Treasury by President James Madison in 1814, serving until 1816.¹⁰ He resumed practicing law in 1816 and died in Trenton, New Jersey, on January 16, 1817. His legacy endures in various ways: Dallas County, Alabama, and Dallas Township, Pennsylvania, are both named after him. Dallas’s son, George Mifflin Dallas, served as Vice President of the United States under President James K. Polk, and it is believed that Dallas, Texas, is named after him.¹¹

Around 1800, well entrenched in their American life, Alexander James Dallas and his wife both sat for the esteemed American artist Gilbert Stuart (1755–1828) (Figs. 2, 3). Maria Dallas wears two portrait miniatures: one attached to a bracelet around her wrist and a second, larger one around her neck that is turned inward, revealing only the miniature’s verso hair reserve. It is possible that Alexander Dallas is featured in one or both of these miniatures, signaling their union. Nevertheless, this diminutive but impactful portrait sketch and the related finished miniature by John Smart appear to be the only portraits created by an English artist before Dallas became a public figure.

Notes

1. The inscription is likely in the artist’s hand. For more on the materiality of Smart’s drawings, see the “Technical Note,” by Rachel Freeman in “John Smart, Portrait of a Woman, ca. 1786,” in this catalogue.

2. Alexander Dallas’s parents owned a large plot of land on the sugar-growing island in the Caribbean, but they left in debt in 1764, settling first in Edinburgh, Scotland, and then in London. For life dates of Dallas and his family, see Pennsylvania, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Deaths and Burials, 1856–1971, entry for Alexander J. Dallas, 1817, FamilySearch.org, accessed March 8, 2022.

3. Raymond Walters Jr., Alexander James Dallas: Lawyer, Politician, Financier (London: Oxford University Press, 1943), 6–8. See also George Mifflin Dallas, Life and Writings of Alexander James Dallas (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1871), 9–13.

4. Arabella Maria Smith was the daughter of Major George Smith of the British Army, who had previously been stationed in the Caribbean. See “Biography: Arabella Maria Smith Dallas,” George Washington’s Mount Vernon, accessed June 1, 2024, https://emuseum.mountvernon.org/people/5780/arabella-maria-smith-dallas;jsessionid=3034C971FAE7DC993588027D3CF6EAB5. See also George C. Mason, The Life and Works of Gilbert Stuart (New York: Charles Scribner, 1879), 167.

5. Some accounts suggest Smith was fifteen and Dallas was twenty, and her grandmother forbade the union. See Walters, Alexander James Dallas, 9.

6. See Walters, Alexander James Dallas, 10.

7. Dallas, Life and Writings of Alexander James Dallas, 10–11.

8. Walters, Alexander James Dallas, 11–13.

9. Noble E. Cunningham, “The Diary of Frances Few, 1808–1809,” Journal of Southern History 29, no. 3 (1963): 347. For a more thorough biography of Alexander James Dallas during his tenure in the United States, see Dallas, Life and Writings.

10. He held this office until Thomas Jefferson became President in 1801, and he was made district attorney for the eastern district of Pennsylvania.

11. Eli Pullman, “Alexander James Dallas,” in The Digital Encyclopedia of George Washington, ed. Anne Fertig and Alexandra Montgomery (Mount Vernon: Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association, 2012), https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/alexander-dallas.

Read more about the types of papers John Smart used at the associated technical note.

John Smart (1741–1811), by around 1780–1811;

By descent to his son, John James Smart (1805–1870), 1811–1870;

By descent to his daughter, Mary Ann Bose (née Smart, 1856–1934), 1870–1934;

By descent to her daughter, Lilian Mary Dyer (née Bose, 1876–1955), 1934–1937;

Purchased from her sale, Sketches and Studies for Miniature Portraits by John Smart, Christie’s, London, November 26, 1937, lot 10, as Mr. Dallas, of Jamaica, by R. Workman, 1937;

Peter Kaufmann, by 1975;

Sold from his sale, A Collection of Fine Portrait Miniatures, Sotheby’s, London, October 13, 1975, lot 86, as Mr. Dallas of Jamaica;

With Bruton Knowles and Co., Gloucestershire, lot 77, April 25, 1996;

Sold, Centuries of Style: Silver, European Ceramics, Portrait Miniatures and Gold Boxes, Christie’s, London, November 17, 2009, lot 335, as Mr. Dallas;

Private Collection, USA, possibly by 2009;

With Philip Mould, London, by 2022–2023;

Purchased from Philip Mould by the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 2023.

John Smart, Portrait of Alexander James Dallas, 1782, watercolor on ivory, sight: 2 1/8 x 1 5/8 in. (5.4 x 4.1 cm), framed: 2 1/8 x 1 11/16 in. (5.4 x 4.3 cm), the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, F65-41/23.

John Smart: Virtuoso in Miniature, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, December 21, 2024–January 4, 2026, no cat., as Portrait of Alexander James Dallas.

Sketches and Studies for Miniature Portraits by John Smart (London: Christie’s, November 26, 1937), lot 10, as Mr. Dallas, of Jamaica.

Advertisement, Burlington Magazine 117, no. 871 (October 1975): viii, xix, (repro.), as A watercolor sketch of Mr. Dallas of Jamaica.

A Collection of Fine Portrait Miniatures (London: Sotheby’s, October 13, 1975), lot 86, as Mr. Dallas of Jamaica.

Centuries of Style: Silver, European Ceramics, Portrait Miniatures and Gold Boxes (London: Christie’s, November 17, 2009), lot 335, as Mr. Dallas.