JOHN BOGLE

On 22nd October 1801, the year the present miniature was painted, Catherine Honyman married The Hon. Montgomery Granville John Stewart (1780-1860), and the portrait is housed in a frame bearing a gold monogram of her married initials. Her new husband was the fourth son of the sixteen children of John Stewart, 7th Earl of Galloway (1736-1806) and his second wife, Anne Dashwood (1743–1830). Catherine was the daughter of Patrick Honyman of Graemsay, Orkney, and one of nine children. She and her husband would also go on to have a large family of eight children, all of whom survived into adulthood.

When this miniature was sold at Sotheby’s in 1985, it was listed as ‘The Property of A. Stewart Esq.’, presumably a descendent of the sitter. It was one of a group of family miniatures, including a portrait by Andrew Plimer of the sitter’s husband[1] and another of Catherine as a young lady with closely cropped hair by Richard Cosway[2].   

The artist, John Bogle was one of the most important Scottish miniaturists of the eighteenth century and came from a rather grand family himself. His maternal uncle had been the ‘Beggar Earl of Menteith’ and the convoluted right of succession lead to the miniaturist being the heir presumptive to the title. Bogle never claimed the earldom but did inherit the relative poverty - the nineteenth-century art historian Allan Cunningham (1784-1842) describing him as ‘a little lame man, very poor, very proud and very singular’.[3]

Bogle studied in Glasgow at the Drawing School and by 1767 he was living and working as a miniaturist in Edinburgh. He exhibited there at the Society of Artists between 1769-1770. A couple of years later he was exhibiting at the Royal Academy in London between 1772-1794, initially giving his address as 1 Panton Square but seemingly had moved back to Edinburgh by the time he wrote his will in 1786. The present work therefore dates after his return to Scotland and belongs to the very end of his life and career.


[1] Christie’s, 11 July 1985, lot 535.
[2] Christie’s, 11 July 1985, lot 512.
[3] Quoted in Foskett, D., Collecting Miniatures, 1979, p.203