A mezzotint after a portrait of John Smith, half length, turned slightly to the right. He wears a cap, a white shirt buttoned at the neck, and a loose mantle. In his left hand he holds an engraved portrait. 2nd state. Inscribed below: Johannes Smith / G. Kneller Eques pinx. 1696. / J. Smith fec. 1716.

This is a peculiarly self-reflexive image, both portrait and self-portrait twice over. The print is John Smith’s mezzotint after Kneller’s painted portrait of Smith, dated 1696 (Tate, London). In that painting Smith is shown holding an impression of his mezzotint after Kneller’s self-portrait (RCIN 657626): the present print reverses the direction of the painting of Smith, and so of the print he holds. The work thus embodies – at different removes from the original – Kneller’s self-portrait, Smith’s print of Kneller’s self-portrait, Kneller’s portrait of Smith and Smith’s print after his own portrait.

There could be no more vivid illustration of the intimate professional and personal relationship between Kneller and Smith. The print held by Smith is signed by him as Kneller’s ‘most humble servant’. Kneller’s portrait of 1696 was a gift to Smith, as recorded in a label pasted to the back of the painting; in return, Smith in 1701 dedicated his translation of Charles Le Brun’s Conference upon Expression to Kneller. Kneller’s death in 1723 essentially marked the end of Smith’s creative career; he was one of the few intimates to whom Kneller bequeathed a mourning ring.

In his great catalogue of mezzotint portraits, John Chaloner Smith observed of this image, somewhat tongue in cheek: ‘A true connoisseur would now be horrified at seeing a print held by anyone in the manner represented, and it is probable that the personage in his afterlife saw the error of his ways in this respect’.

Text adapted from Portrait of the Artist, London, 2016