Creative Commons License
Portrait of Colonel Alexander Smith (1790-1858)
(18th and 19th Centuries )
Colonel Alexander Smith served in the Morgan Volunteers, a Baltimore-based company of the organized militia of the state of Maryland during the 1830s (the organized militia being the ancestor of the modern day Army National Guard). The Morgan Volunteers were a specialized unit, armed with rifles supplied by the state armorer at Annapolis.
This portrait and its companion piece (Walters 37.2774) are among Miller's few early documented works. The colonel's account book lists a payment of seventy-five dollars made for this pair of portraits on April 1, 1833.
Provenance
Provenance (from the French provenir, 'to come from/forth') is the chronology of the ownership, custody, or location of a historical object.
Colonel Alexander Smith, Baltimore, April 1, 1833, by commission; Dr. and Mrs. Gerhard Schmeisser, Gibson Island, Maryland, [date of acquisition unknown] by inheritance; Walters Art Museum, 2006, by gift.
Geographies
USA (Place of Origin)
Measurements
Framed H: 37 1/8 × W: 32 1/8 × D: 3 9/16 in. (94.3 × 81.6 × 9 cm); Frame Window H: 29 1/2 × W: 24 3/16 in. (75 × 61.5 cm)
Credit Line
Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Gerhard Schmeisser, 2006
Location in Museum
Not on view
Accession Number
In libraries, galleries, museums, and archives, an accession number is a unique identifier assigned to each object in the collection.
In libraries, galleries, museums, and archives, an accession number is a unique identifier assigned to each object in the collection.
37.2773
