Adam Smith
James Tassie (Glasgow 1735 - London 1799)
Category
Art / Sculpture
Date
1787 (signed and dated)
Materials
Glass paste
Measurements
90 x 63 mm
Place of origin
London
Order this imageCollection
Dyrham, Gloucestershire
NT 452430.1
Summary
One of a pair of framed white glass paste portrait reliefs. Portrait of Adam Smith (1723-1790) by James Tassie (1735-1799), inscribed on the truncation 'Adam Smith in his 64 year 1787' and signed 'Tassie F'. Smith faces to the right. Displayed in a glazed oval wooden frame.
Full description
James Tassie was born in Pollokshaws, Glasgow. He began his artistic training as a stonemason before enrolling as student in Glasgow's academy of art which had been set up by the Glasgow printers Robert and Andrew Foulis. In 1763 Tassie moved to Dublin where he worked as a laboratory assistant to the physician Dr. Henry Quin. Quin and Tassie developed a vitreous material, described as enamel, which could be used to reproduce classical cameos and intaglios. In 1766, Tassie moved to London where he received commissions to duplicate many famous gems and established a thriving business. Alongside his commercial success reproducing gems, Tassie also produced a great number of contemporary portrait medallions of 'the first people of the kingdom'. He would initially model the portrait from life in wax, then make a plaster cast from which a vitreous paste mould was made. A cast of the portrait relief in the same vitreous paste was the final stage in the process. The portraits were highly neo-classical in style echoing the taste of the time. Adam Smith was a Scottish moral philosopher and political economist, author of The Wealth of Nations, 1776. According to Dugald Stewart who had known Smith, the philosopher 'never sat for his picture' (Biographical Memoirs, 1811, p.117), and there are very few portraits of him. Tassie completed two medallions of Smith in 1787 when he was 64, one in all'antico (as seen in the Dyrham version) and another version in contemporary dress and wig (NPG 3237). Dugald Stewart stated that 'the medallion of Tassie conveys an exact idea of his profile, and of the general expression of his countenance'. It is therefore possible that Smith did sit to Tassie for the portrait. Smith had been Professor of Moral Philosophy at Foulis's Academy in Glasgow while Tassie had been a student there, therefore Smith's appearance would have been well known to the artist. Anna Moore (Feb 2018)
Provenance
Given by Miss Wadge in 1988.
Credit line
National Trust Collections (Dyrham Park)
Marks and inscriptions
On truncation : ADAM SMITH/ IN HIS 64 YEAR/ 1787 To the right of truncation: signed 'Tassie F'
Makers and roles
James Tassie (Glasgow 1735 - London 1799), maker
References
Smith, Adam, 1723-1790. works of Adam Smith, LL.D. ... 1811-1812., p. 521-2 Fay 1956: C.R. Fay, Adam Smith and the Scotland of his day, Cambridge 1956, p. 164