The Portrait Miniatures of Samuel Cooper (1607/8

Transcription

The Portrait Miniatures of Samuel Cooper (1607/8–1672)
curated by emma rutherford
edited by dr bendor grosvenor
Catalogue of an exhibition held at the galleries of
13 November – 7 December 2013
Published by Philip Mould Ltd.
ISBN: 978-0-9927264-0-9
Copyright © Philip Mould Ltd.
Contents
Acknowledgements
7
Introduction
9
by emma rutherford
16
The Wart with a Shadow
by philip mould obe
Catalogue Entries:
Early Years and The Civil War
19
Oliver Cromwell and The Interregnum
59
Restoration
111
The Materials and Techniques
of Samuel Cooper
178
by alan derbyshire
Face Value: Dress and Appearance
in the Work of Samuel Cooper
184
by professor aileen ribeiro
Miniatures by Samuel Cooper
in the Buccleuch Collection
192
by dr stephen lloyd
Author Biographies
198
List of Illustrations
200
Index of Artists
202
Index of Sitters
204
Where possible, all exhibits are reproduced
at actual size.
Acknowledgements
This exhibition and publication could not have been
possible without the kindness of a great many people.
We are particularly indebted to our lenders who have
accommodated our requests with generosity and
encouragement. They are: Her Majesty the Queen and
the Trustees of the Royal Collection; The Ashmolean
Museum, University of Oxford; His Grace the Duke
of Bedford; The Birmingham Museums Trust; The
Blair Castle Charitable Trust, Perthshire; His Grace
the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry KBE, DL;
the Trustees of the Burghley House Preservation
Trust; the Hon. Simon Howard and the Castle
Howard Collection; Compton Verney; The Fitzwilliam
Museum, Cambridge; The Fondation Custodia,
Collection Frits Lugt, Paris; The National Portrait
Gallery, London; The National Trust; His Grace The
Duke of Northumberland DL; The Scottish National
Portrait Gallery (The Dumas Egerton Trust); Trustees
of the Denys Eyre Bower Bequest; The Victoria and
Albert Museum; Warwick Castle and numerous private
lenders, including; the Arturi Phillips Collection, Mrs
J. Scott and other anonymous lenders.
We are most grateful to the following for their
help in facilitating the loans: Jonathan Marsden
CVO, FSA, Desmond Shawe-Taylor LVO, and
Vanessa Remington of the Royal Collection; Professor
Christopher Brown CBE and Colin Harrison at the
Ashmolean; Christopher Gravett at Woburn Abbey;
Simon Cane and Chris Rice at Birmingham Museum;
Sarah Troughton and Jane Anderson at Blair Castle;
Sandra Howat at Bowhill; Jon Culverhouse and
Carolyn Crookall at Burghley House; Dr Christopher
Ridgway at Castle Howard; Sir Peter Moores CBE
and Annelise Hone at Compton Verney; Tim Knox
FSA and David Scrase at the Fitzwilliam; Ger Luijten
at the Fondation Custodia; Sandy Nairne CBE, FSA,
Catharine Macleod, Dr Tarnya Cooper and Dr Lucy
Peltz at the National Portrait Gallery; David Taylor
at the National Trust and Victoria Bradley at Ham
House; Christopher Baker at the Scottish National
Portrait Gallery; Mark Streatfield, Ali Ditzel and Maria
Esain at Chiddingstone Castle; Katherine Coombs and
6
Professor Martin Roth at the V&A and Geoff Spooner
at Warwick Castle.
We would also like to thank Helen Godfrey and
Patricia Middleton, the daughters of the late Daphne
Foskett. The staff at the Heinz Archive have, as ever,
been unfailingly helpful in dealing with our many
enquiries. We are also grateful to: Dr Richard Stephens
at ‘The Art World 1660–1735’; Jeff Pilkington at
Christie’s Archive; Richard Chadwick, Dr Stephen
Lloyd, Alan Derbyshire, Dr Lindsay Stainton,
Martyn Downer, Lawrence Hendra and Professor
Aileen Ribeiro for their invaluable contributions
to the catalogue, and Peter Moore who assisted
with additional research; Bob Wood for framing
and presentation of many of the exhibits; Francis
Hallahan and Rebecca Gregg for their help with the
exhibition preparation; Alan Derbyshire for his advice
and installation of the exhibition; Brett Dolman and
Historic Royal Palaces for their generous loan of
additional display cases; Caroline Brooke Johnson for
proof reading; Richard Ardagh Studio for designing
the catalogue and Anne Sørensen and Simon Bevan
for their assistance; Chris Clarke at Alta Image for
colour proofing images; Ron Hood at Tradewinds
for printing; Richard Haddock and Kim Field at 4D
Projects for the design of the exhibition; and Emma
Calvert, Kat Berry and Catherine Mould from Philip
Mould Ltd for helping make it all happen.
I would personally like to thank this exhibition’s
curator, Emma Rutherford, and the catalogue’s
editor Dr Bendor Grosvenor, for their indefatigable
commitment in bringing about such a scholarly
achievement. This enterprise is not only a significant
addition to the study of Cooper, but also to the often
marginalised subject of 17th century miniature
painting. I hope that the marshalling of these images,
together with the primary research undertaken,
ensures that the purpose of this exhibition and
its catalogue will endure for the benefit of future
generations.
Philip Mould OBE, D.lit. Hons
7
Introduction
Samuel Cooper; reconstructing a life
by emma rutherford
n November last year, in one of the weekly meetings
we hold at the gallery, and rather flushed from the
success of a recent exhibition, we discussed plans for
2013. Philip, ambitious as always, posed the question,
‘so, who would you say was the greatest miniaturist of
all time?’ The answer came easily and unanimously
– ‘Samuel Cooper.’ Almost exactly fifty years ago,
Graham Reynolds came to the same conclusion, ‘a
modern critic would certainly agree that he is,
irrespective of scale or medium, the greatest Englishborn portrait painter of the seventeenth century, in
every way comparable with van Dyck and subtler and
more forceful than Lely.’1 Oliver Millar went further,
suggesting that the accolade from Bernard Lens ‘that
he was commonly stil’d the Van-Dyck in little’ was ‘an
almost inadequate tribute’2
Although his work has none of the Elizabethan
romance of Nicholas Hilliard (c. 1547–1619), nor
the mannerist spirit of Isaac Oliver (c. 1555–1617),
as dealers who spend their daily lives looking at
faces from the past Cooper’s portraits have always
appeared more accessible and personable, the sitter
simply more tangible, than the work of any other
miniaturist. Beyond their immediate aesthetic qualities,
his portraits also crucially feel multi-layered, as
though through these small paintings lies access to
the essence of the person portrayed. Writers on his
work, contemporary and modern, have tended toward
extreme hyperbole to describe his portraits.3
Within the confines of a commercial gallery, it is
simply not possible to fully explore the career of
an artist of such magnitude and of such prodigious
output. To do this with any real force would require
a museum setting, with full time curators. But it
is thanks to the generosity of the lenders to this
exhibition, both public and private, that we are able to
do justice, albeit on a modest scale, to the ‘Greate (tho’
little) Limner’.4 How extraordinary it is then to be able
to exhibit an image of Oliver Cromwell once described
8
as ‘one of the most moving…one of the greatest British
portraits’ (cat. 21), alongside other seminal works from
Cooper’s career.5 Other miniatures in the exhibition
are by artists whose careers ran alongside or crossed
over with Cooper’s own. We hope that these provide
something of a context for his work, as well as an
indication of the extraordinarily close interfamilial
network of limners during this period.6
The last exhibition devoted solely to Cooper was
held at the National Portrait Gallery in London in
1974, curated by the late Daphne Foskett (1911–1998).
Her daughters have been kind enough to write a few
words so that this catalogue can be connected and
indebted to her work:
Daphne Foskett, Mother of Patricia and Helen
had a great love of art and in particular miniatures.
She managed to fit in her writing and research
which included visiting many collections at home
and abroad in spite of her commitments to her
family and aging grandparents who lived with us
in Edinburgh. She continued to do her research
and writing when she moved to the Lake District
and after our Father’s death she managed to
write a monograph on Samuel Cooper which
was published by Faber and Faber. She was
approached by Sir Roy Strong to assist in curating
an Exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery,
“Samuel Cooper and his contemporaries”. Our
Mother developed her skills and interest in the
history of miniature painting in spite of having
no formal post school education and her attention
to detail was evident in everything that she
undertook. Her family are very proud of all that
she achieved.7
In writing the catalogue for the exhibition we have
encountered the same issues which beset Foskett
and earlier writers on Cooper – for an artist so able
to record the minutiae of the lives of others we
have frustratingly few details on his own life. Mary
9
Edmond’s work on parish registers has been invaluable
and her findings have been authoritatively interpreted
and evolved by others, most notably perhaps by
Graham Reynolds, Richard Walker, John Murdoch,
Katherine Coombs and Catharine MacLeod.8 In this
exhibition catalogue we have included essays which
refer to the more tangible elements of Cooper’s
legacy – including his technique and materials (Alan
Derbyshire, p. 178) and how his work was later sought
after by highly important collectors (Dr, Stephen
Lloyd, p. 192). Aileen Ribeiro explores an aspect of
Cooper’s work which is often overlooked in her essay
on his depiction of costume (p. 184).
It is perhaps only a human wish to see the face of
the artist himself, not mirrored by his clientele but as
he was seen by others or, even more illuminating, by
himself. An early task was to examine the portraits that
were meant to represent Cooper or those which had
previously been deemed to represent him. In this we
have been able to persuasively rehabilitate the pastel
portrait loaned by the Victoria and Albert Museum
(cat. 67). Through a re-examination of the provenance
and new light on Hoskins via contemporary
newspapers, this portrait has now been accepted
by the museum as a portrait of Cooper, attributable
to his younger cousin, Hoskins the younger. This
approachable likeness of circa 1660–5 provides a
satisfying contrast to the assertive self-portrait of 1645,
lent by Her Majesty the Queen (cat. 1).
The details of Cooper’s childhood, like that of the
uncle who raised him, are few and far between. So
few facts are known that many particulars relating
to his early life are pure speculation. He was born,
probably in the autumn or winter of 1608, to ‘Richard
Cowper’ and ‘Barbara Hoskens’, who were married
in September 1607 in the Parish of Blackfriars.
There is no record of the couple’s deaths, but they
relinquished their parental status; we only have the
words of Richard Graham that Samuel and his younger
brother Alexander were ‘bred up under the Care
and Discipline’ of their uncle at a young age.9 John
Murdoch states that this was 1610, although he does
10
(Fig. 1) Attributed to Samuel Cooper, 4th Earl of Dorset. An
early work painted whilst in Hoskins’ studio and showing clear
influences from Van Dyck.
(Fig. 2) Cooper’s instructions for preparing pigments allows an
invaluable study of his style of handwriting.
not name his source.10 If this was the case, and we
assume that John Hoskins was born 1590, then to take
on two toddlers was quite a responsibility for a young
man barely out of his teens. It has not been possible
to confirm a timeframe for Hoskins taking charge of
his nephews but the assertion by Graham that they
were ‘bred up’ under his ‘care’ and ‘discipline’ may be
interpreted as they were raised as children and then
apprenticed under his roof.
Cooper emerges from his uncle’s studio fully
formed as an artist, possibly with the personal support
of the great portrait painter, Sir Anthony Van Dyck
(1599–1641). De Piles comments that, ‘He so far
exceeded his master, and uncle, Mr Hoskins, that
he became jealous of him, and finding that the court
was better pleased with his nephew’s performances
than his, he took him in partner with him; but still
seeing Mr. Cooper’s pictures were more relished, he
was pleased to dismiss the partnership’, suggests that
after his apprenticeship Hoskins attempted to hang
on to his gifted pupil.11 His hold was possibly also
financial, as we do not know what bequest, if any, the
presumably orphaned Cooper brothers had received
from their parents.
From the mid-1630s, when Cooper would have
been in his twenties, a sense of restless ambition can
be seen embodied in portraits such as that of Edward
Sackville, 4th Earl of Dorset [Victoria and Albert
Museum, P.104–1910] (fig. 1). Although signed with
the Hoskins trademark ‘IH’, it is more likely to be a
gifted response from his pupil, by now his assistant or
partner, to the new interest in the oil portraits of Van
Dyck. A small group of extant works from this period,
including that of Margaret Lemon (cat. 6), The Earl
of Holland (cat. 2) and the newly identified William
Killigrew (cat. 5) are further evidence of Cooper’s close
personal relationship with Van Dyck and his desire to
remove himself from his uncle’s increasingly outmoded
practice. Although there are no signed examples
from Cooper’s hand of exact and complete copies
of Van Dyck’s portraits, his miniatures persistently
repeat compositions and details such as draperies or
backgrounds found in his paintings.12 His brushwork
also aped that of the master oil painter; while other
miniaturists had begun to make their portraits more
‘Van Dyckian’ it seems from Cooper’s assertive strokes
that he had the advantage of studying from the original
paintings and most likely watched Van Dyck at
work. From Graham’s note that he ‘derived the most
considerable advantages from the Observations that
he made on the work of Van Dyck’ it can be inferred
that the oil painter’s influence on the miniaturist was
direct and intimate, and it is unthinkable that Cooper
did not educate his hand through copying.13 This was
certainly a route advised by Edward Norgate, who
wrote his treatise in 1627–8 (revised c.1648–9) and
advocated:
The best way of learning to draw well is to be
taught by a good Artist that is able to direct you
and shew you where you ere … for you are not
able to see your owne faults at the first. Yea many a
time a stander by may spy a fault in the worke of a
good workeman. Be not out of hope although your
draught comes far short of your patterne at the first,
For daily practise with a Continued resolution and
intention of the minde … And once in fower or
five years time you may be a good draughtsman.14
When the celebrated Baron Théodore Turquet de
Mayerne (1573–1655) visited the Hoskins residence
in Bedford Street in 1634 we get a singular glimpse of
Cooper’s handwriting (fig. 2).15 Mayerne was interested
in the preparation of pigments and he notes Cooper’s
recipes for various colours, giving him the proper
title of ‘Enlumineur’ (‘illuminator’) he clearly denotes
Cooper as more than a preparer of pigments. Although
Cooper was clearly stationed within his uncle’s studio,
and not at this point the principal painter in his own
premises, there is a sense that Mayerne is particularly
drawn to this young man’s rare prowess, noting that he
was divulging ‘tout le secret de lenluminure’.
Cooper’s early biographers speak of his time abroad,
however no specifics are known about when or where
he travelled.16 There has always been supposed to be
a dearth of works signed by Cooper in this period
11
between 1637 and his first dated work of 1642 (cat.
7) but perhaps this does not represent the hiatus
previously imagined. Bendor Grosvenor’s new dating
of Cooper’s portrait of Margaret Lemon to the late
1630s or early 1640s (cat. 6) places him firmly in the
country during these supposed ‘lost years’. If he did
travel abroad then it was perhaps for a very brief
period, possibly to visit his brother Alexander who
was in the Netherlands from the early 1630s. The lack
of signed and dated works from these years may have
the simple explanation that he was still working for
his uncle, producing only occasional, but exceptional,
independent miniatures for Van Dyck’s illustrious
clientele (for examples, see cats. 2 and 5). It is possible
to speculate that Hoskins would have found it hard
to refuse these requests, given his own financially
advantageous working relationship with the influential
oil painter.
By 1642, the year in which Cooper opened his
independent studio, London had moved on both
politically and artistically. The brilliant career of Van
Dyck had been halted by his early death at the age of
42 in December 1641 and within a month, in January
1642, the royal family departed from London and
moved the court to Oxford. The first battles of the
Civil War began in earnest.
Much has been made of Cooper’s political neutrality,
which during a Civil War was of course a hugely
beneficial position for a portraitist. The fact that his
portraits were amalgamated with those of his uncle,
who held a tantalisingly brief official position at court,
may have hidden any of Cooper’s political leanings
at an opportune time. It is tempting to suggest that
alongside his other talents lay an entrepreneurial
streak. As Bendor Grosvenor states in his catalogue
entry on the Buccleuch Cromwell sketch (cat. 21),
Cooper was not affiliated with Charles I, whom he
never officially painted. It was through the association
with his uncle, however, that he might have had the
benefit of seeing the great works of art at the Caroline
court. The combination of his internationally regarded
talent, and lack of previous royal patronage,possibly
12
encouraged benefaction from those seeking purely his
brilliance as an artist. A portrait by Cooper offered a
powerful combination of the aesthetic and intellectual
that held universal appeal.17 In imagining Cooper’s
busy studio of the 1640s, it is also clear that he must
have been a superior diplomat, avoiding the potential
drama that could ensue with both parliamentarians
and royalists negotiating sittings.18
Pepys’ comment, upon accompanying his wife to
her third sitting was ‘now I understand his great skill
in musick, his playing and setting to the French lute
most excellently: and he speaks French, and indeed
is an excellent man.’19 Pepys writes as if he is meeting
a celebrity, whose reputation is talked about with
such reverence that it is not believed unless witnessed
at first hand. Pepys’ experience of watching Cooper
paint was just that – an experience. While London
was busy with artists, Cooper was worth waiting for.
Van Dyck had been able to finish a portrait, with the
help of assistants, within a week, whereas Cooper
usually insisted on up to eight sittings.20 This was quite
a commitment to ask of a client, but one endured
without question from his patrons – in fact, it appears
to have been worth paying simply to witness that
touch of genius. Cooper’s conscientious working
methods delighted and frustrated in turn – from
Dorothy Osborne’s letter of 1654 it seems she goes
to some lengths to secure a sitting, ‘I have made him
[Cooper] twenty courtesys, and promised him £15 to
persuade him.’21 His position as England’s principal
portraitist, albeit without a formal court annuity, was
firmly established.
Cooper’s portrayals of men and women during
the civil war period and the Protectorate were a
connection with past stability during the most volatile
of times. While vital links with the continent were
halted, ‘art’ became a luxury few could turn their mind
to. Cooper, however, provided an artistic commodity
that gained further relevance during this time of war,
when families were often parted. Cooper’s honest, ad
vivum images of the 1640s and early 1650s portrayed
men ready to fight in their armour (see cats. 11 & 32)
(Fig. 3) Edward Pierce, Monument to Samuel Cooper in
St Pancras Old Church.
and women in Van-Dyckian poses, eschewing the
violent reality of the present with the familiarity of
compositions from the recent past (see cats. 18 & 27).
At the Restoration Cooper was in his fifties, and after
flourishing during over a decade of wartime adversity,
artistically confident. The vigour of the new court
suited him and, as the restrictions of Puritan living
were lifted, so did Cooper’s palette. Portraits such as
that of the Marchioness of Atholl (cat. 56) demonstrate
a new interest in dynamic colour. His customary
manner of working ad vivum was also taken further
and a delight in the mechanics of drawing explored in
his valued sketches, such as those of Charles II (cat. 45)
and of the young Duke of Monmouth (cat. 52). The
allure of these works continued after Cooper’s death,
evidenced in the long running negotiations between
his widow and prospective buyers for the unfinished
works in his studio (see Lindsay Stainton’s description
of these transactions in her entry for cat. 52).
The magnetism of Cooper’s portraits continued
unabated throughout his life and unlike other
artists, he does not seem to have been blighted by
physical, mental or financial difficulties, working
into his early sixties until, as Charles Beale noted
in his diary in 1672,
‘Mr.Samuel Cooper the most famous
Limner of the World – for a face Dyed –’22
The wording on his monument (which still exists
in the Old Church of St. Pancras, London (fig. 3),
probably composed by Thomas Flatman, his friend
and fellow miniaturist (cats. 64 & 64a), names him as
the worthy ‘Apelles of England’.
We must ask, however, why has Cooper’s fame
not lasted? Invariably, our mental image of the
Interregnum, and certainly the Restoration, is now
shaped by other artists, chiefly Lely. And yet, as
Bendor Grosvenor points out (cat. 22) Lely was
obliged to copy Cooper’s portrait of Cromwell, in what
remains a unique instance of a painter ‘in large’ having
to follow the efforts of a miniaturist. Furthermore, as
Richard Chadwick also points out (cat. 44), in 1660
the newly restored King Charles II positively raced
to have sittings with Cooper on his return to London.
Rather than summon the artist to court, Charles paid
Cooper the seemingly extraordinary compliment of
going to his studio. After Van Dyck, there was no
better portraitist in Britain in the 17th Century, and
yet Cooper’s name is rarely included in any list of great
British artists.
Two reasons for the sad diminution of Cooper’s
reputation in modern times have become apparent
during the preparation of this exhibition and catalogue.
First, because of their delicate nature, miniatures
are rarely exhibited, and, we have found, even more
rarely lent. If they are displayed in major galleries
it is in hard-to-see cases permanently covered by
cloth, to keep out the light. Few visitors bother to
lift the veil. Oil paintings, on the other hand, can
be left permanently on display, safely protected by
varnish and pigments that rarely fade. Then there is
the question of reproduction. Photography has not
served Cooper well over the years. And despite the
latest advances in digital photography, we have found
13
that it is almost impossible to replicate the power of a
Cooper miniature on the printed page. It is not hard
to see how Cooper has gradually slipped into the
background behind the likes of Lely.
All the more reason, then, to have a public
exhibition of some of Cooper’s best works. Here we
include portraits which might, we hope, be seen as a
something of a fitting legacy to Cooper’s talent, not
least when we compare it to the also-ran efforts of
what might be loosely termed his ‘competition’ (cats.
28, 29, 35, 36, 37, 51 & 64) and his ‘followers’ (cats.
26, 58 & 63). Cooper’s contemporaries demonstrate
easily why, after Cooper’s death, no one miniaturist
would again wield so much power, or command such
international status.
One of the best reminders of how Cooper’s
reputation survived into the 18th century comes
in the form of a typically pithy caricature by James
Gillray (1756–1815) (fig. 4). It shows George III
as a short-sighted connoisseur, so blinded by the
quality of Cooper’s painting that he draws no parallels
between the subject (Oliver Cromwell) and his own
flawed monarchy.23 More than words, this image is an
eloquent reminder of the lost veneration of such an
idol as Cooper and his rightful place in the history of
British painting.
14
(Fig. 4) James Gillray, ‘A Connoisseur Examining a Cooper’.
Here we see King George III examining by candlelight a portrait
by Cooper of Cromwell.
1 Graham Reynolds, English Portrait Miniatures (London, 1952), p.49.
2 The miniature is at Welbeck Abbey: on the label Lens has written the
following words: “Samuel Cooper, a Famous Performer in Miniature stil’d
Van Dyck in little, he Died in London in ye year 1672, 63 year of his Age.
Bernard Lens fecit.” Oliver Millar, The Age of Charles I, exh. cat., The Tate
Gallery, London, 1972, p.111.
3 See the introduction to Aileen Ribeiro’s essay (p.184) for many of these
elaborate sobriquets.
4 This quote is taken from the inscription on the original backboard of the
drawing of Thomas Alcock, cat.43. It is thanks to the assistance and advice of
Richard Chadwick that many loans have been secured for this exhibition.
5 David Piper, Catalogue of seventeenth-century portraits in the National
Portrait Gallery, 1625–1714 (London 1963), p.298
6 Members of Cooper’s extended family and fellow limners lived in Covent
Garden, London, which was newly established as something of a community
of intellectuals and artists (see inside cover for a map of Covent Garden
dated c.1655).
7 Written and reproduced in this catalogue by kind permission of the
daughters of Daphne Foskett (1911–1998); Patricia Middleton and
Helen
Godfrey.
8 Further resources are now available online, with ‘The art world in Britain
1660–1720’ <http://artworld.york.ac.uk> invaluable for material relating to
Cooper and his contemporaries.
9 Richard Graham in du Fresnoy’s Art of Painting and the Lives of the Painters,
translated into English by Mr. Dryden (1695), p.338–9. Despite a search of
online grave records none appear for these names, although it is possible that
they died of bubonic plague; in 1610 over 1800 deaths were recorded from
this disease.
10 John Murdoch, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004) entry,
‘Samuel Cooper’, although this goes against his earlier conclusion that the
Samuel was orphaned at sixteen, taken from the appendix of du Fresnoy’s
Art of Painting and the Lives of the Painters (op.cit), which I have been
unable to confirm (J. Murdoch et al, The English Miniature (New Haven and
London 1982), p.105).
11 Bainbrigg Buckeridge, The Art of Painting... To which is added, An Essay
towards an English School (3rd edn of 1754; from 1969 Cornmarket facimile),
pp. 364–6.
12 Bendor Grosvenor has brought to my attention many examples of Cooper’s
part imitation of Van Dyck’s paintings not previously acknowledged. For
example the line and fall of the drapery of Van Dyck’s portrait of Woman
with a Rose (circa 1639–40, Accession Number: P21n12, Isabella Stewart
Gardner Museum, Boston), is closely akin to his portrait of Elizabeth
Bouchier (cat.19). Closer still is Cooper’s miniature of the Countess of
Devonshire (cat.7), which emulates the drawing of Van Dyck’s head in the
portrait of her at Petworth House.
13 Richard Graham in du Fresnoy’s Art of Painting and the Lives of the Painters,
translated into English by Mr. Dryden (1695), p.338–9. Buckeridge asserts
that he also copied the works of Van Dyck but to date I have found no exact
replicas of his oil paintings, outside the studio of John Hoskins, by Cooper.
14 Jeffrey M. Muller & Jim Murrell, eds, Edward Norgate, Miniatura or the Art
of Limning (New Haven and London, 1997), p. 239.
15 The discovery of this manuscript was made by Basil Long who transcribed
it: ‘Notes: A manuscript by Samuel Cooper and a Side- light on John
Hoskins’, Notes and Queries (July 1921), no. 168.
16 Richard Graham recorded that he was known to ‘the greatest Men of France,
Holland, and his own country, and by his Works more universally known
in all the parts of Christendom’ (Richard Graham, A short account of the most
eminent painters both ancient and modern, continued down to the present
times, according to the order of their succession, in C. A. Du Fresnoy, De arte
graphica / The art of painting, trans. J. Dryden (1695), p.376
17 This is evidenced not only by Cooper’s patronage from both
Parliamentarians and Royalists, but also from the circle of philosophers and
academics attracted to his studio – for example, he painted miniatures of
both Sir Samuel Morland (1625–1695) and Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679).
18 Puritans had no objection to portraiture, as can be seen in Oliver
Cromwell’s personal tastes and in his employment of Cooper to portray his
family. In this exhibition Parliamentarians and Royalists are positioned side
by side. For example, in 1649 Cooper painted the King’s staunch supporter,
Montague Bertie, 2nd Earl of Lindsey (cat. 16) and, in the same year, his first
portrait of Cromwell (cat. 17), presumably keeping the sittings for the two
men well apart. We do not know the month in which these portraits were
painted but they would have been commissioned just prior to, or shortly after,
the execution of the King Charles I – one of the most politically sensitive
periods of Cooper’s career.
19 The Diary of Samuel Pepys, 19th July 1668, (Diary of Samuel Pepys, 1668,
Transcribed From The Shorthand Manuscript In The Pepysian Library Mag
dalene College Cambridge By The Rev. Mynors Bright, 1893).
20 As Norgate noted, these sittings could last until ‘your owne and your freinds
patience will hold out’ (Jeffrey M. Muller & Jim Murrell, eds, Edward Norgate,
Miniatura or the Art of Limning, (New Haven and London 1997), p.75
21 Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, letter 66, Tuesday, June 13th 1654
(E. A. Parry, ed, (London, 1888))
22 (Sunday 5th May 1672.) Charles Beale, Pocket book, 1672, with
commentary by Richard Jeffree, circa 1975, National Portrait Gallery Heinz
Archive, Richard Jeffree papers, drawer 2 folder 22; the pocket book
transcript from George Vertue, ‘Notebook A.x’, circa 1740, British Library
Add Ms 23072.
15
The Wart with a Shadow
by philip mould obe
hat is it about these little pieces of watercolour
on vellum that causes them to loom so
large? What, in their day, caused a king, princes and
intellectuals to pay exorbitant ransoms for a sitting?
Why did Horace Walpole risk describing them as
‘perfect nature’, and the 19th century art historian,
George Williamson, as ‘little short of a marvel’? What
was it that caused the academically temperate former
director of the National Portrait Gallery, David Piper,
to describe Cooper as the greatest face painter in 17th
century Europe?
All can possibly be explained by a series of
attributes which, when added to the historical
backdrop of one the most progressive periods in
English history, provided for the perfect storm
in miniature.
Cooper’s veneration can be best understood by
segregating his finest and most emotive works. It is
helpful to sideline his copies, secondary versions,
damaged and faded portraits, and those painted
either too early in his career to shine, or of sitters
too dull to stir his genius. It is also worth adding that
paradoxically a number of those works that continue
to race the pulse – the unfinished, ad-vivum studies
– were not designed for public viewing at all, but
remained in his studio for the purposes of painting
lucrative versions. A clutch of unfinished works by
Cooper in the Royal Collection, for example, were
purchased by Charles II from Cooper’s widow.
What this leaves is a corpus of work, which is
undeniably sublime in the context of 17th century
British art. It was the most celebrated of these, the
Buccleuch portrait of Cromwell which has been fully
analysed by Dr Bendor Grosvenor, that Walpole
was probably referring to below. It is worth quoting
16
this in a fuller context, not just as a fuller testament
to Cooper’s brilliance in the eyes of a creditable
18th century connoisseur-collector, but by what it
usefully fails to grasp with the benefit of art historical
hindsight:
The works of Oliver [a near contemporary
miniature painter] are touched and retouched
with such careful fidelity, that you cannot help
perceiving they are nature in the abstract; Cooper’s
are so bold that they seem perfect nature, only of
a less standard. Magnify the former, they are still
diminutively conceived. If a glass could expand
Cooper’s pictures to the size of Vandyck’s, they
would appear to have been painted for that
proportion. If his portrait of Cromwell could be so
enlarged, I don’t know but Vandyck would appear
less great by the comparison.1
Walpole’s terminology ‘nature in the abstract’
relates to a debate reaching back to antiquity on the
role and purpose of the artist and which continued to
inform 17th and 18th century thinking on the subject.
Walpole, although crediting Cooper with skills of
perfect anatomical observation, initially implies that
Oliver’s are better on the basis that they are
abstracted nature – nature, in effect, that the artist
has improved upon, as befits the artist’s higher and
noble calling. In other words, at first glance Cooper’s
commendable naturalism (perfect nature) does not
add up to greatness.
Helpfully, in order to understand this rather
abstruse artistic stand-point from a modern
perspective, Sir Joshua Reynolds more fully articulates
this directive towards his students in his seventh
discourse six years later. In it he states that it is the
job of the artist to distinguish ‘accidental deficiencies,
excrescences, and deformities of things … [making]
an abstract idea of their forms more perfect than any
one original’. In other words it was the artist’s job to
improve upon, as well as faithfully depict, the subject.
The pivotal reason why Cooper is so successful,
however, is because his work subtly parries this
contemporary orthodoxy. In fact Walpole chose the
wrong artist in Van Dyck to make the point about his
greatness. Were his portraits of Cromwell or Hobbes
on the size of life, the intensity of facial observation
should perhaps be better compared to Rembrandt
and the Dutch realist school than Van Dyck’s
lyrical Flemish realism. Instead it is more useful to
consider the masterful way Cooper explored human
individualism in an unfashionably bold way while
tacitly conforming to contemporary rules of elegance
and enhancement.
Walpole was closer to the mark in contrasting the
work of Cooper to Peter Oliver, primarily because it is
through Oliver we encounter not just his father Isaac,
but his father’s near contemporary Hilliard. Their neomedieval fantasy portraits of court figures set the high
bar for miniature painting prior to Cooper’s ascent.
Setting aside glimpses of extraordinary virtuosity in
Holbein’s extremely rare English portrait miniatures
in the previous generation, it is fair to assume that
these potent, jewel-like images lingered in the
psyche of a 17th century clientele who required an
updated equivalent.
Partly developed by his uncle and teacher John
Hoskins from whom Cooper took over through
pressures of work, Cooper was assisted by the fashion
for larger images, which licensed a more expansive
handling of the subject in the second quarter of the
17th century. It was within this more liberating extra
space that we can register the strong influence of Van
Dyck on Cooper in his mature phase, particularly
following the death of Van Dyck and Dobson when
a distinct lull in native artistic talent allowed Cooper
to respond to a continuing hunger for Van Dyckian
refinement. One of Baroque Flemish art’s gifts to
British portraiture was its reduced reliance on the
didactic nature of costume: freed from the emphatic
messages of jewels, finery, mottoes and elaborate
symbolism, in miniatures it resulted in notably less
visual competition with the face. The now larger visage
could become a greater mind-map of the subject, and
the erosion of ruffs and formal costume facilitated
more scope in bodily posture. Cooper exploited
all these vernaculars, employing Van Dyckian
smoothness and grace in deportment, uniting drapery
and armour seamlessly to the visage and employing
fractionally varied tilts to the head to express differing
demeanours. It is of little surprise in this respect that
Walpole saw some of them as effectively doll’s house
Van Dycks.
But crucially it is in facial idiosyncrasy and
characterisation that Cooper sets out his stall. In this
respect it is tempting to see his practice of vellum
painting in the tradition of scientific naturalism, a
strengthened form of verisimilitude compared to
Van Dyck that even shares some of the characteristics
of the life-mask in his more memorable portrayals.
Physiognomy requires only the minutest of
adjustments to achieve expressive distinction, and
the delightful aspect of Cooper’s better portraiture
is its independence from any template. Eyes can be
riskily asymmetrical (Henrietta Anne, Duchess of
Orleans, 1660–61, V&A); hair often more unruly;
lips, which had a tendency to be more formulaically
17
Early Years and
The Civil War
handled in previous generations, are used by Cooper
as an opportunity to increase the topography and
vocabulary of the face (Sir Thomas Rivers, cat. 18).
His skin tones are particularly remarkable and with
skilful lighting become intrinsic to character – the
youthful smoothness of the young Duke of Monmouth
(cat. 52), the tincture of swarthiness to Catherine of
Braganza (Royal Collection), the iridescent powdery
white of courtly women such as the putative Duchess
of Buckingham (?) (cat. 33), the redder tones of
his middle-aged male sitters, are all physiological
statements executed with unparalleled virtuosity
with his distinctive blend of gouache and
transparent watercolour.
Was Cooper a radically naturalistic painter for
his country and period? If he were only known for
the Buccleuch Cromwell one would definitely say
yes. It may also be interesting to speculate that in his
supposed wilderness years – 1636–42 – from which
no known dated portraits exist that he spent time
under the influence of Dutch painting, in particular
the work of Rembrandt, which might explain his
distinctive, occasionally tenebrist lighting and erring
towards a stronger engagement with facial realism.
But, these speculations apart, as Emma Rutherford
has shown, he was also a sophisticated man of his age:
he knew how to play by the rules of the societies of
which he was part. He understood the expectations
and demands of court and political thinking and
responded with due diplomacy and refinement,
much as the leading portrait painters like Mytens,
Van Dyck, Lely and Kneller had and would continue
to do. But what gave his luminescent records of
humanity their particular distinction, and has allowed
their presence to endure so powerfully, is that their
individuality was not overly eclipsed by protocol.
Both his patrons and early commentators such as
Walpole may not have realised, as we can today with
the benefit of art history, the slim but crucial distance
that Cooper held back from ‘abstracting’ his subjects
into the manners of place and period, and thus
preserved their distinct humanities. It would take
well over another half century and the emergence
of another native portraitist, William Hogarth,
before the record of the British face could be
comparably blessed.
1 Horatio Walpole, Anecdotes of Painting in England (vol. 3, 1763), p.61.
Walpole probably refers to Isaac Oliver (d.1617)
18
19
Cat. 1
(Fig. 5) Sir Anthony Van Dyck, Self-Portrait. Van Dyck’s last selfportrait was widely admired by his followers, including Cooper,
who emulated the pose in his own self-portrait.
Samuel Cooper
Self-Portrait, 1645
Watercolour on vellum laid on card
Oval, 72mm (2 7/8 in.) high
Signed lower right ‘S. Cooper fe: 1645’, the back
gessoed and inscribed ‘Samuel Cooper fecit feberuaris
1644 ould stile’
Provenance
Recorded by George Vertue at Kensington Palace in
1734; Thence by descent.
Lent by Her Majesty the Queen and the Trustees of the
Royal Collection (RCIN 420067)
The first thing to say about this miniature is that
it is better (more detailed, more subtle, and more
luminescent) than the illustration above can convey.
As Emma Rutherford points out in her introduction,
this is a common problem with Cooper’s miniatures
– their scale and delicacy means that they are often
impossible to illustrate satisfactorily. Nonetheless,
20
here we have one of Cooper’s outstanding and most
important portraits, and consequently it begins our
catalogue. How exciting it is to see an artist who, in
his time, had an unrivalled affinity for faces, paint his
own. If we know that Cooper regularly demanded up
to seven or eight sittings from his patrons,1 we can be
reasonably sure that the likeness here is one of the most
meticulously studied and presented of the age.
Self-portraits are often among an artist’s best works,
especially when we are dealing with portraitists. When
portraitists paint themselves, they tend to produce
something far above the standard of their regular
commissions. To pick just a few 17th century examples,
the self-portraits of Sir Anthony Van Dyck (fig. 5), Sir
Peter Lely and Michael Dahl (both National Portrait
Gallery, London) are widely recognised as the stand
out works of their oeuvre. And it is fair to say the same
of the present example by Cooper.
However, for many years there was an ill-founded
notion, from the late 19th century to the later 20th
century, that cat. 1 did not in fact show Cooper. Partly
this was due to the limitations surrounding its display
and reproduction. In photographs, the flattening and
softening of much detail in the face had the effect
of making the sitter look younger than the 35 years
Cooper would have to be if he was the subject. And
yet when examined in person,2 one has little trouble in
seeing a sitter (who, we should recall, was a small and
youthful-looking man) in his mid-thirties.3 Similarly,
the miniature’s quality was sometimes hard to grasp,
and in books and catalogues it did not always stand out
as one of Cooper’s finest portraits. In the 1974 Cooper
exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery cat. 1 was
called simply, ‘Portrait of an Unknown Man’, and
Cooper himself was thought, albeit it tentatively, to be
represented by fig. 6 (Victoria and Albert Museum).4
The V&A miniature is today rightly recognised as
not being Cooper. And although it seems hard now
to understand (not least on the basis of eye colour),
cat. 1 was also thought, in an 1881 Royal Collection
inventory, to be a portrait of the artist Robert Walker,
on the basis of a comparison with that painter’s selfportrait in the Royal Collection (fig. 7). The Walker
identification persisted until the 1950s. Any doubt
about the identity of cat. 1 was finally laid to rest by
Graham Reynolds’ authoritative entry for his 1999
catalogue of the 16th and 17th century miniatures in
the Royal Collection.5
Possibly, some doubts about the identity arose
due to the lack of any firm provenance linking the
portrait back to Cooper himself. And yet, as the
research for this catalogue has frustratingly confirmed,
miniatures and concrete provenance rarely go
together. Miniatures are easily marooned (in a desk
drawer, a jacket pocket, a thief’s hand) from any
paperwork that ever accompanied them, and unlike oil
paintings have little space on the reverse or the frame
for a handy scribble confirming ownership, identity
or attribution. In any case cat. 1’s absence from the
few early sources on Cooper which survive is hardly
21
(Fig. 6) Samuel Cooper, Unknown Gentleman. Exhibited at the National Portrait
Gallery in 1974 exhibition as a possible self-portrait
surprising. In 1673 Charles II granted a pension of
£200 to Cooper’s widow for ‘several [unspecified]
pictures or pieces of limning of a very considerable
value which are agreed to be delivered into our hands
for our own use’, and it may be that cat. 1 was amongst
these.6 But Charles was evidently not a regular payer,
or didn’t pay at all, for by 1676 Christiana was seeking
arrears, and later on was almost certainly offering to
sell some if not all of the miniatures earmarked by
Charles to Cosimo de Medici. Cat. 1 does not feature
in the list of Coopers offered to Cosimo in 1677,
doubtless because Christiana wanted to keep it.7 If, as
seems probable, it did remain in Christiana Cooper’s
possession, it was most likely bundled in with ‘all my
said husbands pictures in Limning’ bequeathed to
her ‘Cozon’ John Hoskins the younger in 1693,8 and
as noted in cat. 67, no catalogue for Hoskins’ 1703
sale, with its ‘Choice Collection of Limnings, by Mr.
Cooper’ exists. Nor does the self-portrait feature in
Michael Rosse’s (Susannah-Penelope Rosse’s widower)
1723 sale, which was catalogued and included many
Coopers, but not, it seems, any particularly stellar
ones. It is likely that by 1723 cat. 1 was already in the
Royal Collection.
22
As so often, George Vertue provides our first record
of the miniature. In 1734 he saw at Kensington Palace
‘a high finishd limning being Cooper the limner’,
and noted the form of the signature, ‘S.Cooper. f.
1645.’9 While it is worth noting that Cooper did not
insert an ‘ipse’, to make it clear that the miniature
was a self-portrait, the combination of the signature
and inscription is more elaborate than he normally
used, and is therefore probably indicative of the
identification. Vertue did not see any discrepancy in
the age of the sitter, and nor between the likeness here
and that in the pastel portrait of Cooper attributed
to Hoskins the younger, cat. 67, with which he was
familiar, and which is here identified as showing
Cooper. Indeed, the facial similarities are striking
between the two portraits, allowing for the passage of
time and two different artists. The colouring, shape of
the nose, the unusual open mouth, the structure of the
lips and chin, are all closely comparable.
The self-portrait appears to be, like William
Dobson’s of a similar date (Jersey Collection), a
homage to Van Dyck’s of c.1640 (fig. 5), which in turn
seems (it was also owned and copied by Sir Peter
Lely10) to have become the celebrated and defining
(Fig. 7) Robert Walker, Self-portrait c.1645. The previous suggestion
of Robert Walker as the sitter was based on a comparison to this work.
image of Van Dyck among his English followers. Like
Van Dyck, Cooper adopts a typical pose for an artist
painting himself and shows his right arm raised in
the act of painting. The costume, as Aileen Ribeiro
notes (p. 184), is meticulously rendered, not least in
the upturned edges of the collar. But while Ribeiro
sees such costly clothing as ‘inconsistent’ with a selfportrait, and also with the clothing Cooper wears in
cat. 67, it seems to the present writer scant reason
to doubt the traditional identification. The self-
portrait may have been intended as a demonstration
of Cooper’s skill, and his ability to capture the rich
and detailed clothing favoured by potential patrons
(perhaps he was just fond of that particular jacket, we
can never know). Nor can the clothes Cooper wore
when Hoskins the younger painted him many years
later be intended as a guide to what he might have
been wearing in 1645.
1 See Emma Rutherford’s introduction, p. 9.
2 Emma Rutherford and I are most grateful to Vanessa Remington of the Royal
Collection for showing us the miniature out of its frame at Windsor Castle.
3 Graham Reynolds, The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Miniatures in the
Collection of Her Majesty the Queen (London, 1999), p. 130.
4 Daphne Foskett, Samuel Cooper and his contemporaries, exh, cat., National
Portrait Gallery (London, 1974), p. 8, no. 11.
5 Ibid, no. 106, p. 129.
6
7
8
9
bg
Ibid, p. 133.
See cat. 58.
Daphne Foskett, Samuel Cooper (1609–1672), (London, 1974) p. 98.
‘Vertue Note Books Volume 4’, in The Walpole Society, vol. 24, 1935–6
(Oxford, 1936), p. 68.
10 Lely’s copy is in a private collection. See Bendor Grosvenor ed., ‘Finding
Van Dyck’ (Philip Mould & Co., London, 2011), p. 19, illus.
23
Cat. 2
(Fig. 8) Samuel Cooper, Portrait of the 1st Earl of Holland. One of
Cooper’s earliest signed works, despite being painted when he was
working in the studio of his uncle, John Hoskins.
Samuel Cooper, in the studio of John Hoskins the Elder (c.1590–1665)
Portrait of Henry Rich, 1st Earl of Holland (1590–1649), c.1632–34
Watercolour on vellum
Oval, 116.5mm (4 9/16 in.) high
Original oakboard frame on reverse inscribed
‘Earl of Holland/ beheaded/ No 122/ by Old Hoskins/
Pret 6£ :0 :0’
Provenance
Inventory 1679 – presumably one of ‘thirty eight
pictures with ebony frames’; Estimate of Pictures in
Ham House (Buckminster Park Archive), c.1683,
as ‘My Lord of Holland of Old Hoskins’, no. 122;1
Purchased with contents of the house, 1948.
Lent by the National Trust (Ham House Collection,
HH376–1948)
This authorship of this unsigned portrait has been
the cause of much speculation and debate among art
historians. John Murdoch, following his 1978 article in
The Burlington Magazine,2 lays out the argument for it
24
being worked on by both Hoskins and Cooper in his
book Seventeenth Century English Miniatures in the
Collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum (1997).
When the miniature was seen in the 1974 Cooper
exhibition by Sir Oliver Millar, he declared that the
portrait ‘has a topographical background very much in
the manner of Hoskins’.3 The present writer believes
the work can be attributed wholly to Cooper, whilst
working in Hoskins’ studio, and dated to c.1632–4.
The early listing of the portrait in the Ham House
‘Estimate’, written as ‘Old Hoskins’, certainly places
the miniature as originating from that artist’s studio.
On stylistic grounds, however, the portrait displays
the animated brushwork of the young Cooper, which
can be seen refined in the portrait of Lady Elizabeth
Percy, Countess of Devonshire (cat. 7), particularly in
the broad stroke treatment of the sky background. As
John Murdoch surmises, by the 1630s John Hoskins
the elder can no longer be seen as a singular artist
but as ‘a studio staffed by talented individuals whose
separate identity is now lost’.4 All those of course
apart from Samuel Cooper, who, in the absence of a
separate address, we can assume was still under the
guardianship of his uncle at this date.
The emergence of a version of this portrait signed
by Cooper further suggests that this portrait is from his
hand (fig. 8). While it has not been possible to compare
the two side by side, and both have suffered greatly in
condition, there seems little reason to doubt that this
second miniature is from Cooper’s hand.5 One of the
two versions was engraved in 1796 by J. Godfroy, as
after an ‘Original Picture of the same size by Cooper’.
The very existence of two versions of this portrait
may add strength to the notion of this as a studio
work, produced in multiple versions by Hoskins’ busy
practice.
As is the case with many of Cooper’s portraits of
the mid to late 1630s, this portrait of Henry Rich is
influenced by, but not directly copied from, portraits
of the same sitter by Van Dyck. This becomes apparent
in Cooper’s working practice during the late 1630s and
early 1640s, and shows an approach quite different
from the miniaturised copies produced by his uncle
John Hoskins and his studio. Here, Cooper appears to
have had direct access to the sitter and has painted him
ad vivum, apparent in the intricate details of the sitter’s
1 Information taken from: Christopher C. Rowell ed., Ham House, 400 Years
of Collecting and Patronage, (New Haven and London, 2013), p. 463
(Estimate BPA 361).
2 John Murdoch, ‘Hoskins and Crosses: a Work in Progress’, in The Burlington
Magazine, vol. 120, no. 902, 1978.
3 Oliver Millar, ‘Samuel Cooper at the National Portrait Gallery’, in The
Burlington Magazine, vol. 116, no. 855 (June 1974), p. 349.
4 John Murdoch, ‘Hoskins and Crosses: a Work in Progress’, in The Burlington
Magazine, Vol. 120, no. 902, 1978, p. 287.
5 The existence of this portrait is known from an advertisement in Apollo, April
1988, placed by the Swiss dealer E. Bucher. The miniature is described as
‘Signed, ca. 1627/40, on parchment/ 104 cm high’. The portrait appeared at
face and clothing, as well as in the measured handling
of his expression. His assimilation of Van Dyck’s
portrait of the sitter was subtler than an orthodox
copy in that he offered the client the sensation of a
portrait by the great master. The supreme confidence
in his ability to handle watercolour with the same
assurance that Van Dyck handled oil paint secured his
contemporary label of ‘genius’ in the art of limning. A
19th century description of one of the portraits of Rich
by Van Dyck as ‘painted with great spirit’ could just as
easily have been applied to Cooper.6 The portrait
of Henry Rich is a landmark work for Cooper,
signalling a sensational new direction for the future
of portrait miniatures.
Henry Rich was the second son of Robert Rich, 3rd
Baron Rich (1559?–1619) and Lady Penelope Rich
(1563–1607). His complex career and personal life
began with a close attachment to the court through
his appointment as bedchamber servant to Prince
Charles. This portrait may have entered the collection
at Ham House as a gift from Henry Rich to William
Murray, 1st Earl of Dysart (d.1655). Both he and
Murray accompanied Prince Charles to Spain in 1623
and the two men may have remained close up until
the early 1630s when this portrait was painted. Rich
then rose in power, taken into the trust of the powerful
Duke of Buckingham and becoming a favourite of
Charles I. He was instrumental in arranging the king’s
marriage to Henrietta Maria. His closeness to the royal
family did not, however, prevent him from joining
the Parliamentarian side at the outbreak of the Civil
War. He then changed allegiances several times before
his arrest and execution by Parliament in 1649; as
James Granger stated, ‘His conduct was so various
with respect to the king and parliament, that neither
party had the least regard for him.’7 He showed great
composure at his death, a contemporary observer
stating, ‘he carried himself very humbly, and with a
great deal of devotion and reverence’.8
er
auction Phillips, 12th December 1984, lot 400 and Christie’s, 25th November
1987, lot 397. The miniature is now in the collection of Museum Briner und
Kern, Winterthur, Switzerland.
6 Christie’s, London, 24th June 1809, lot 107, Sir Anthony Van Dyck, Portrait
of Henry Rich, Earl Holland, ‘very animated, painted with great spirit’.
7 James Granger, A biographical history of England, adapted to a methodical
catalogue of engraved British heads, vol. 1 (London, 1824) p. 299. 32
8 The Maner of the Beheading of the Duke of Hambleton, the Earl of Holland, and
the Lord Capell, in the Pallace-Yard at Westminster on Friday the 9th of March,
1648, with the substance of their severall Speeches upon the scaffold,
immediately before they were Beheaded (published by Theodore Jennings,
London, 1648 [old style]).
25
Cat. 3
(Fig. 9) Sir Anthony Van Dyck, Portrait of Charles I & Henrietta Maria. Hoskins was regularly asked
to copy Van Dyck’s portraits for the king and queen. It is possible that Cooper worked on such copies.
John Hoskins the Elder (c.1590–1665), after Sir Anthony Van Dyck
Portrait of Charles I (1600–49) and Henrietta Maria (1609–69), 1636
Watercolour on vellum, laid on a panel branded ‘C.R’
70 x 114 mm (2 ¾ x 4 ½ in.)
Inscribed between the figures ‘C.M.R’ (in monogram),
and dated ‘1636’
Provenance
The collection of Charles I; Frances, Lady Hertford,
1st Duchess’s Inventory, c.1773; Thence by descent in
the collection of the Dukes of Northumberland.
Lent by His Grace the Duke of Northumberland
This fine miniature is a copy by Samuel Cooper’s
master, John Hoskins the elder, after an original by
Sir Anthony Van Dyck (fig. 9). As such, it typifies
the way in which painting ‘in large’ tended to be
seen as somehow superior to ‘limning’, and Hoskins
frequently had to make do with taking the king and
queen’s likenesses (and indeed other patrons) from
portraits by different artists. Indeed, when the Earl of
Strafford asked Hoskins to copy his portrait by Van
26
Dyck, he asked rather patronisingly if Van Dyck could
‘help him’. It is a telling sign of Cooper’s reputation
that, after he had established himself in independent
practice post-c.1642, he seems never to have copied
portraits from other artists, and of course later reversed
the practice when it came to Peter Lely having to copy
his miniature of Oliver Cromwell (cat. 22).
Van Dyck’s original portrait was painted in 1632,
one of his first portraits of the king and queen, and
hung in Henrietta Maria’s private drawing room at
Somerset House.1 The composition, with the passing
of a laurel wreath symbolic of eternal love, reveals
the closeness of the royal marriage. The picture
was, however, commissioned to replace one of a
similar composition by Daniel Mytens,2 Van Dyck’s
predecessor as court painter, which had not been
deemed a success on account of its unflattering likeness
of the queen. Later, Mytens was humiliatingly obliged
to paint over his portrait of Henrietta Maria with
a copy of Van Dyck’s, and unsurprisingly soon left
Charles I’s employ to return to Holland.
Hoskins’ copy, dated 1636, is evidence of the
popularity of Van Dyck’s portrait within the royal
family. The royal cipher of Charles I on the panel
support indicates that the present miniature must
be the Hoskins described in Van der Doort’s 1637–9
inventory of the Royal Collection, which is listed
with similar dimensions of 2 ¾ x 4 ½ inches.3 It
may have entered the Northumberland collection
shortly after Charles I’s death, when the 10th Earl of
Northumberland acquired many of Charles’ works.
Given the clear influence of Van Dyck’s portraiture
(both in terms of technique and compositions) on
Cooper’s later work, it is tempting to believe that
Cooper may have been involved, while in Hoskins’
studio, in painting this fine copy. Certainly, Cooper
must at some point have made direct copies of Van
Dyck’s work, if only for instructional purposes.
bg
1 Now in the collection of the Archiepiscopal Castle and gardens, Kromeríž,
Czech Republic.
2 Royal Collection, RCIN 405789.
3 See Oliver Millar, ed., ‘Abraham van der Doort’s Catalogue of the Collections
of Charles I’, in The Walpole Society, vol. 27 (Glasgow, 1960), p. 106.
27
Cat. 4
(Fig. 10) Alexander Cooper, Portrait of Elizabeth Stuart, Queen
of Bohemia. Cooper’s brother was a well-respected miniaturist,
but mostly worked abroad.
Alexander Cooper (bap. 1609–60)
Portrait of a Gentleman of the Spottiswoode family, aged 27, 1639
Oval, 53 mm (2 1/8 in.) high
Gold italic inscription ‘Patior ut Potiar’, also dated on
obverse, ‘aet: 27/ 1639’
Provenance
Henry J. Pfungst Collection; Christie’s, London, 14th
June 1917, lot 61 (as ascribed to Peter Oliver); Bt
‘Stoner’, £81.18; Christie’s, London, 9th November
1994, lot 8; Bonhams, London, 21st November 2007,
lot 56.
Lent by the Arturi-Phillips Collection
Alexander Cooper is now certainly known to have
been Samuel Cooper’s younger brother, following the
discovery of his baptism record by Mary Edmond.1
For many years some biographical details of the
two brothers were confused, and it may be that the
persistent belief that Cooper spent part of his early
28
career abroad derives from a misreading of Alexander
Cooper’s time in Holland and Sweden. Like Samuel,
Alexander was adopted by his uncle, the miniaturist
John Hoskins, and it can be assumed that both
brothers assisted him in his studio. However, the
German art historian Joachim von Sandrart (1606–88)
states that Alexander was taught by Peter Oliver
(c.1594–1647) and was ‘by far [his] most
celebrated pupil’.2
John Murdoch suggests that Alexander may have
remained in London following his training, and ‘In the
1630s [he] may have contributed to the output of the
Hoskins studio.’3 However, there is no firm evidence
of his hand in Hoskins’ work from this period and it is
likely that he was the artist of the miniatures anxiously
awaited by Elector Frederick V during his campaign in
the camp at Nuremberg.4 This would place Alexander
geographically in the Netherlands during 1631/2.
The existence of a signed portrait of Lord William
Craven, when he was at the exiled court of Elizabeth
of Bohemia in The Hague, would support the theory
that Alexander began his peripatetic career travelling
the courts of Europe in the early 1630s.5 If Samuel also
travelled during the late 1630s, it is possible that he
joined his brother for a time.
Alexander Cooper’s portrait of Elizabeth Stuart,
Electress Palatine and Queen of Bohemia (1596–1662)
(fig. 10) can be firmly placed to his time at the court
in The Hague, where he painted her family during
the 1630s. A collection of portraits of similar size and
quality are in the Bode Museum, Berlin. Too small to
be successfully displayed in the exhibition, it is a rare,
signed example of his early work which clearly relates
in technique to his master, Peter Oliver.6 This group of
intimate family portraits demonstrates a deep level of
trust placed in the young Alexander, who appears to
have set up an independent practice almost ten years
earlier than his elder brother Samuel. An introduction
from Oliver to Alexander Cooper to some of his most
important patrons would have been an invaluable gift
from master to apprentice.
Documentary evidence reveals that Alexander
was in Sweden from 1647, as he appears in the court
records as ‘official painter’, receiving a pension of
800 Swedish Crowns.7 According to these accounts,
he remained in Sweden until 1657, after which he is
documented as being in York with his family, having
lived with his brother Samuel ‘for these two yeares last
past’.8 His date of death is given as 1660 but there is no
record of where he died, or his place of burial.
This portrait, dated 1639, probably represents a
member of the Spottiswoode family (their motto is
inscribed on the frame), and it may be that Alexander
was in England at this time. It has not been possible
to identify the sitter, who would have been born in
1612. The unsigned miniature, now attributed to
Alexander Cooper, is representative of the issues
surrounding his work. Previously attributed to Peter
Oliver,9 the portrait demonstrates Alexander’s unique
mix of archaic components with elements of Van
Dyck’s influence on British portraiture. This miniature
combines calligraphy associated with the Elizabethan
miniaturist Nicholas Hilliard, with Baroque
chiaroscuro, seen in the shadow to the right of the
sitter and the shoulder of his doublet.
Doubtless due to his apprenticeship with Oliver,
and his time abroad, the body of extant work for
Alexander is very different in tone to that of his
brother. It has a precision and finesse quite apart
from the loose, baroque brushwork seen in Samuel’s
work. This is particularly apparent in work which
survives from the late 1630s, where Alexander’s quiet
backgrounds, painted wet-in-wet or subtle mauve-grey
shades, contrast greatly with Samuel’s loose, theatrical
skies, in which a myriad of colours can be glimpsed
behind lavish velvet curtains or above landscapes.
er
1 See Mary Edmond, ‘Limners and Picturemakers’, in The Walpole Society,
vol. 47 (1978–80), p. 99. Edmond corrects Samuel Cooper’s birth to the end
of 1608, finding a record for Alexander’s baptism in 1609. As Alexander died
before Samuel, it was previously assumed that he was the elder.
2 J. Sandrart, Academia nobilissimae artis pictoriae (1683), p.312.
3 John Murdoch, ‘Cooper, Alexander (bap. 1609, d. c.1660)’, Oxford Dictionary
of National Biography, (Oxford, 2004).
4 ‘I fear I will not receive the rest of the portraits of my children. I received
those of the two eldest, and am impatient to have the others’, Nadine
Akkerman ed., The Correspondence of Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia
(Oxford, 2011), p.112.
5 This miniature was sold Christie’s, ‘Important Portrait Miniatures, The
Collection of a European Lady’, 21st April 1998, lot 17.
6 Nadine Akkerman ed., The Correspondence of Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of
Bohemia, (Oxford, 2011), p.112.
7 Görel Cavalli-Björkman, ‘Alexander Cooper in the Nationalmuseum’, in
Nationalmuseum Bulletin (Stockholm, 1977), p.116
8 Mary Edmond, ‘Samuel Cooper, Yorkshireman – and recusant?’, in The
Burlington Magazine, vol. 127, no. 939 (Feb. 1985), pp. 83–5.
9 When this portrait was exhibited in ‘La Miniature Anglaise’ in Brussels in
1912, no. 66, it was attributed to Peter Oliver, and was again catalogued as
‘perhaps by Peter Oliver’ when lent to the Victoria and Albert Museum,
London in 1914/15 (no. 35, lent by Pfungst).
29
Cat. 5
(Fig. 11) Sir Anthony Van Dyck, Portrait of Sir William
Killigrew.
Samuel Cooper
Portrait of a Gentleman, thought to be Sir William Killigrew (bap.1606–95), late 1630s
Signed with separated initials in black ‘SC’
Provenance
Samuel Addington; His sale Christies, London, 26th
April 1883, lot 106 for £63; John Lumsden Propert
Collection; Asprey, London, by 1972; Bonhams,
London, 22nd November 2006, lot. 27;
The Arturi-Phillips Collection.
Until recently, this fine portrait of a man by Cooper,
dating to the late 1630s, was identified as Philip
Herbert, 4th Earl of Pembroke (1584–1650), who
would have been at least an improbable 55 years of
age at the time.1 Research undertaken in the course
of compiling this catalogue, which included close
comparison of the works of Van Dyck and Cooper
30
during the later 1630s, has revealed a comparable
likeness between this work and Van Dyck’s 1638
portrait of Sir William Killigrew (fig. 11, Tate Britain,
TO7896). If the identification is accepted, this portrait
of an important courtier is a rare example of Cooper’s
work of the later 1630s, and possibly prior to his
supposed sojourn abroad. It may also strengthen the
notion of some kind of alliance, both personal and
professional, between Van Dyck and Cooper.
This miniature is one of Cooper’s finest heads and
shows a degree of sophistication unrivalled in many
of his early works. The sitter is shown facing slightly
away from the viewer, his head tilted as if in deep
contemplation. The dark, uncluttered background
is perfectly in keeping with the sombre mood of
the sitter, melancholic and thoughtful. This rather
unconventional background is also a rejection of the
backdrops employed by Hoskins the elder at this
time, although this appears to have been only a brief
experiment on Cooper’s part.2 A portrait by Cooper
in the Royal Collection (RCIN 420079), again with
a plain background, may be added to this period, if
an earlier date in the late 1630s can be accepted on
the basis of this sitter’s costume; the same may be
applicable to a portrait of Sir John Hamilton (b.1605;
Coll. Earl of Haddington).
Sir William Killigrew was both a courtier and
a playwright. Descended from a long established
Cornish family, he grew up with the advantage of a fine
education and a family home near Hampton Court. He
was knighted by Charles I in 1626 after a two year tour
er
1 The Pembroke identification was probably first recorded in the ‘Special
Exhibition of Portrait Miniatures’, South Kensington Museum (V&A), 1865
no. 310.
2 Cooper returns to the conventional half shadow/half sky background later
in the 1640s, possibly in response to the request of his clients or perhaps in an
attempt to streamline his increasing workload.
of Europe, and in the same year was married to Mary
Hill. Despite his time abroad and courtly position (he
was made Gentleman-Usher of the Privy Chamber by
Charles I), he maintained close links with Cornwall,
becoming MP for Penryn in 1628. Van Dyck’s portrait
of him from 1638 is one of a number of portraits
commissioned from the artist by the Killigrew family,
which include the double portrait of Thomas Killigrew
and ?William Lord Crofts (Royal Collection, RCIN
407426).
31
Cat. 6
Samuel Cooper
Portrait of Margaret Lemon (fl.1630s), late 1630s–early 1640s
Oval, 121 mm (4 ¾ in.) high
Inscribed lower left ‘Margaret [in monogram] Lemon’,
and signed ‘S.C.’
Provenance
Collection of Henry Pfungst FSA (as recorded by
Foster in 1914), whose family, according to Fritz Lugt,
possessed it for several generations; Sold by Henry
Pfungst, Christie’s, London, June 14th 1917, lot 26,
£378; With Colnaghi, London; Fritz Lugt; Fondation
Custodia, Institut Néerlandais, Paris (395).
Lent by the Fondation Custodia,
Collection Frits Lugt, Paris
The dating of this miniature of Margaret Lemon, Van
Dyck’s mistress, is uncertain, but it is habitually cited
as Cooper’s earliest known independent work, thought
to have been painted in about 1635.1 Its excellent
32
quality has, by extension, served as evidence of ‘lost
years’ between it and Cooper’s earliest dated work of
1642, a portrait of the Countess of Devonshire (cat. 7).
‘One is left wondering’, wrote Daphne Foskett in her
1974 exhibition catalogue, ‘what has happened to the
miniatures executed during the intervening years’.2
The present writer’s view, however, is that the
miniature of Margaret Lemon was probably painted
somewhat later than has been believed, perhaps even
in the early 1640s. There appears to be no evidence for
an early date of 1635, only the repetition of a possible
date first apparently suggested, on the basis of the
costume, in an article by Graham Reynolds in 1961.3
The precise dating of portraits by costume is often
risky, however, and in any case, similar costume can be
seen in works of the later 1630s by Van Dyck.
The pose of the head follows closely that chosen by
Van Dyck for his last portrait of Lemon (fig. 12, Royal
Collection),4 and although it is always difficult to judge
the age of sitters in portraits, it seems impossible to say
(Fig. 12) Sir Anthony Van Dyck, Portrait of Margaret Lemon. Van Dyck’s
mistress is the subject of one of Cooper’s best miniatures. Unfortunately,
we know nothing of their relationship.
that Cooper’s Lemon is younger than Van Dyck’s. If
anything, with her slightly fuller face, she is older. Sir
Oliver Millar was right to date Van Dyck’s portrait to
c.1638, for it is in the artist’s later English style (though
possibly not, knowing the standards of the day, for
the reason he gives as ‘before Van Dyck’s marriage
[to Mary Ruthven] in 1639’).5 In any case, Van Dyck’s
earlier likeness of Lemon, of which the best version is
at Blenheim,6 is even further away from the face we see
in Cooper’s miniature. We must also consider that the
confident and graceful handling of Cooper’s portrait
of Lemon, especially in such details as the landscape
background and the intricately rendered column,
is more assured than examples of what may now be
deemed to be earlier examples of his work, such as
cat. 2.
Rather than accept that there is a cache of
comparable but lost works covering the years 1635–42,
and that Cooper somehow emerged as an independent
artist at an early stage with his mature style
miraculously formed, it seems more likely to assume
that the recent dating of Cooper’s Margaret Lemon
is simply erroneous, and that therefore on grounds of
style and the sitter’s likely age, this miniature should
be dated to the later 1630s at the very least, and more
likely to the early 1640s. It is even possible, given the
portrait’s melancholy air, its black costume and the
broken column (often used to denote a tragedy), that
the miniature in some way relates to Van Dyck’s death
in 1641.
There are few details of Margaret Lemon’s life
outside her relationship with Van Dyck. We know
neither her date of birth or death. The most recent
entry for her in the Oxford Dictionary of National
Biography is unfortunately a work of almost complete
fiction. It erroneously sees Lemon’s portrait appear in
numerous paintings by Van Dyck and other artists, and
thus comes to the misleading conclusion that ‘no other
seventeenth-century woman without substantive ties to
the aristocracy was painted as often’.7
33
The few records of Lemon that do survive suggest
that she possessed a certain celebrity in London’s
artistic circles. In about 1651–2 Richard Symonds
records that it was still being remarked a decade
after Van Dyck’s death that ‘Twas wondered by some
that knew him thatt having bene in Italy he would
keepe a Mrs of his in his house Mris Leman & suffer
[Endymion] Porter [Van Dyck’s close friend] to keep
her company.’8 The engraver Wenceslaus Hollar gives
us the famous story that Lemon became so jealous of
Van Dyck painting unescorted female sitters that she
once tried to bite his thumb off. Another sign of her
notoriety could lie in the fact that Van Dyck’s portrait
of her, which was in his collection at his death, was
promptly acquired by Charles I.9
Where Van Dyck’s portrait of Margaret shows her
with an exposed breast, thus no doubt signalling her
position (to him at least) as a courtesan, Cooper’s
appears at first glance to show her in male clothing.
The iconographic reference here, if there is one, is
harder to ascertain. Women wearing men’s clothes
was not it seems that unusual, though it was hardly
approved of. Phillip Stubbes complained in 1583 that
‘though this be a kind of attire appropriate onely to
man, yet they [women] blush not to weare it’.10 And
we know that it was certainly fashionable during the
Restoration, for not only do we have Cooper’s two
miniatures of Frances Stuart, Duchess of Richmond
in male attire (Royal Collection11 and Rijksmuseum12),
but Pepys also tells us that court women dressed as
men for riding: ‘…which was an odd sight, and a sight
that did not please me’.13 This last observation may
even provide the reason for Margaret Lemon’s dress
here; that is, as Janet Arnold suggested,14 she is dressed
for riding. Either way, the unusual costume makes it
very likely that this miniature was the portrait of ‘Mrs
Leman in Mans clothes’ seen by Richard Symonds in
the London house of George Geldorp, a painter and
art dealer who worked with Van Dyck and later copied
his paintings.15
1 Graham Reynolds has a date of 1633–4 in The Sixteenth and Seventeenth
Century Miniatures in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen (London, 1999),
p.128.
2 Daphne Foskett, Samuel Cooper and his contemporaries, exh, cat., National
Portrait Gallery (London, 1974), p.7, no.9.
3 Graham Reynolds, ‘Samuel Cooper: Some Hallmarks of his Ability’, in The
Connoisseur, vol. 147, Jan–June 1961, p.18.
4 Susan Barnes, Nora De Poorter, Oliver Millar and Horst Vey, Van Dyck – A
Complete Catalogue of the Paintings (New Haven and London, 2004) repro.
p.552, no. IV.157.
5 Ibid, IV.157 p.552
Complete Catalogue of the Paintings (Yale, New Haven and London, 2004)
repro. p.553, no. IV.158.
7 Susan E. James, ‘Lemon, Margaret (b. c.1614)’, ODNB (Oxford, 2004).
Complete Catalogue of the Paintings (New Haven and London, 2004), p. 551.
9 Although not listed as such in Millar’s catalogue entry, the Royal Collection
picture must be the ‘curtisan [in red]’ mentioned in
the posthumous inventory of Van Dyck’s possessions.
See Christopher Brown and Nigel Ramsay, ‘Van Dyck’s
Collection: Some New Documents’, in The Burlington
Magazine, vol. 132, no. 1051 (Oct., 1990), p. 707.
10 Janet Arnold, ‘Fashions in Miniature’ in, Costume,
vol. 11 (1977), pp. 45–55.
11 RCIN 420102.
12 Inventory no. 996.
13 12th June 1662
14 Janet Arnold, ‘Fashions in Miniature’ in, Costume,
vol. 11 (1977), p. 50.
15 Susan Barnes, Nora De Poorter, Oliver Millar and
Horst Vey, Van Dyck – A Complete Catalogue of the
Paintings (New Haven and London, 2004), p.551.
34
bg
35
Cat. 7
(Fig. 13) Follower of Sir Anthony Van Dyck, Portrait of Elizabeth,
Countess of Devonshire. Cooper’s portrait of the Countess shows a
clear debt to Van Dyck’s.
Samuel Cooper
Portrait of Elizabeth, Countess of Devonshire, née Cecil (c.1620–89), 1642
Rectangular, 155 x 117 mm (6 1/8 x 4 5/8 in.)
Signed and dated ‘Sa: Cooper /pinxit a.d. 1642’
Provenance
Elizabeth, Countess of Devonshire, née Cecil, her will,
proved 13th November 1690, listed as ‘A picture of
the late Countess of Devonshire by Cooper in white, by
whom given to her daughter, Anne, Countess of Exeter’;
Thence by descent.
Lent by the Burghley House Collection (MIN 001)
The present miniature is the earliest dated portrait by
Samuel Cooper. From 1642 Cooper generally dates
his work, and this year is traditionally given as the final
break from his apprenticeship, or partnership, with
John Hoskins the elder.
This ambitious work, over 15 cm in height, merits
36
Cooper’s soubriquet of ‘Vandyck in little’, aping the
oil painter’s pose and background.1 It is likely that
Cooper would have been introduced to the Cecil
family of Burghley House by John Hoskins, as several
earlier works by his uncle remain in the collection,
including a rare cabinet miniature (Venus, Mercury
and Cupid) as well as portraits of the family which
postdate the present portrait, including that of the
son of the present sitter, William Cavendish, Fourth
Earl and First Duke of Devonshire (1640/1–1707).
The closeness of the portrait to Van Dyck’s image
of the countess, now at Petworth House,2 and a
contemporary copy at Burghley House (fig. 13), may
also suggest that the oil painter exerted influence in
securing this important commission for Cooper.
Cooper almost certainly painted this portrait in
London, living a few hundred metres away from ‘Little
Salisbury House’ on the Strand, where Elizabeth Cecil
was living with her husband in 1642. John Strype
37
recalls that ‘In Little Salisbury House lived William
Cavendish, Earl of Devonshire’, presumably with his
wife, Elizabeth.3
In his portrait of Elizabeth, Cooper has paid
homage, perhaps with particular poignancy, to Van
Dyck, who had died just the previous year. Although,
as was the pattern with Cooper’s signed works, he did
not attempt an actual repetition of Van Dyck’s whole
composition, the sumptuously described curtain,
carved wooden frieze and landscape glimpsed through
an opening in the wall appear as deliberate visual
reminders of Van Dyck’s signature spatial schemes and
dazzling naturalism.4
The pose of the countess differs from Van Dyck’s
portrait, but once again looks to that artist for
inspiration. She stands with her hands cradled, a
gesture that is most notably repeated in Van Dyck’s
portraits of Queen Henrietta Maria (1609–69). The
gesture is sometimes recognised as an indication
of pregnancy, although in 1642, Elizabeth had
already given birth to a son the year before (William
Cavendish, 1st Duke of Devonshire, born January
1641) and was not to give birth to her daughter
until 1645.5
Cooper’s full and bold signature suggests a thrusting
confidence and it is possible that this work, probably
painted back in England after a time in Europe, was
a showpiece from which Cooper expected further
significant commissions.6 The only hesitance is
shown in the sitter’s hands, described by J.J. Foster as
‘carelessly posed across the waist [and] very weakly
drawn.’7 It was perhaps this portrait that Buckeridge
had in mind when he described Cooper’s strength
as ‘chiefly confin’d to the head, for below that part
of the body he was not always as successful as cou’d
have been wish’d’.8 Portraits painted later in Cooper’s
career show a more assured depiction of hands, as
in his portrait of Frances Theresa Stuart, Duchess of
Richmond (dated 1660–5).9
Lady Elizabeth Cecil, second daughter of William,
2nd Earl of Salisbury, married in 1638/9 William
Cavendish, 3rd Earl of Devonshire (1617–84). In her
will she bequeathed a number of miniatures to her
daughter, Anne, who had married John, 5th Earl of
Exeter, in 1670.
towards an English School (3rd edn. 1754; from 1969 Cornmarket facsimile):
biography of Samuel Cooper, pp.364–6.
2 In the private collection of Lord Egremont, repr. in Susan Barnes, Nora De
Poorter, Oliver Millar and Horst Vey, Van Dyck – A Complete Catalogue of the
Paintings (New Haven and London, 2004) p.500, no. IV.90.
3 Peter Cunningham and Henry Wheatly, London Past and Present: Its History,
Associations and Traditions (1891), vol. 3 (reprinted, Cambridge, 2011), p. 205.
See also: ‘Salisbury House’, Survey of London: vol. 18: St Martin-in-the-Fields
II: The Strand (1937), pp. 120–23, where it is noted that the house was rented
to various tenants, including William Cavendish, 3rd Earl of Devonshire.
4 The curtain and carved frieze are also included in Van Dyck’s portrait of
Algernon Percy, 10th Earl of Northumberland (1602–1668) with his first wife
Lady Anne Cecil (d.1637) and their daughter, Lady Katherine Percy (1630–
1638) of 1635, which must have been seen by Cooper (Petworth House,
National Trust Collections), who painted his second wife (see cat. 7).
5 As Karen Hearn suggests, this is ‘a gesture that must relate (at least generally)
to female fertility – or rather, to the capability of fertility. So, I suspect that
sometimes it may indicate pregnancy, but not always’ (personal
communication). This gesture is also found in Van Dyck’s portraits of Princess
Mary, when only a child (which exists in four versions by Van Dyck: Museum
of Fine Arts, Boston; Historic Royal Palaces, Hampton Court (formerly owned
by Sir Oliver Millar); Royal Collection; Private Collection.
6 This size of portrait was abandoned by Cooper until revived later in his career.
One comparable portrait is in the Royal Collection (attributed to Samuel
Cooper, RCIN 420951).
7 J.J. Foster, Samuel Cooper and the English Miniature Painters of the XVIIth
Century, 2 vols., (London, 1914-–16), vol. 1, p. 44.
8 Bainbrigg Buckeridge, The Art of Painting ... To which is added, An Essay
towards an English School (3rd edn., 1754; from 1969 Cornmarket facsimile):
biography of Samuel Cooper, pp. 364–6.
9 Royal Collection, RCIN 420102.
38
er
Cat. 8
(Fig. 14) Sir Anthony Van Dyck, Portrait of Henrietta Maria.
Van Dyck’s recently discovered c.1640 portrait of the queen as St
Catherine. Was Cooper influenced by Van Dyck’s later technique?
Samuel Cooper
Portrait of Elizabeth Howard, Countess of Northumberland, (c.1622–1705), early 1640s
Inscribed in pen on reverse of frame, ‘Lady Elizabeth
Percy/No. 56 S Cooper’
Provenance
Elizabeth, Countess of Devonshire, née Cecil, her will,
proved 13th November 1690, listed as ‘A picture of
the Earle of Northumberlands second wife by Cooper,
by whom given to her daughter, Anne, Countess of
Exeter’1; Recorded in the 1835 inventory of Burghley
House, Japan Closet, no.56; Thence by descent.
Lent by the Burghley House Collection (MIN 003)
Lady Elizabeth Howard was the second daughter
of Theophilus, 2nd Earl of Suffolk (1584–1640) and
Elizabeth, née Home (d.1633). She married in 1642,
as his second wife, Algernon Percy, 10th Earl of
Northumberland (1602–68). She was his first wife’s
40
cousin. Prior to her early death in 1637, her husband
had previously been married to Lady Anne Cecil
(1612–37), elder sister of Elizabeth, Countess of
Devonshire, whose will cites this miniature. Though
undated, it probably falls close to the sitter’s marriage,
which took place in October 1642.
The group of miniatures by Cooper at Burghley
(cats. 7, 8 & 10), along with several others in
this exhibition (cats. 13 & 19) highlight his close
observation of portraits by Van Dyck. This portrait
may have entered the collection at Ham House as a
gift from Henry Rich to William Murray, 1st Earl of
Dysart (d.1655). Both he and Murray accompanied
Prince Charles to Spain in 1623 and the two men may
have remained close up until the early 1630s, when this
portrait was painted. Van Dyck’s influence naturally
extended to miniaturists, and, as cat. 3 shows, there
is a great deal of evidence to show that John Hoskins,
Cooper’s uncle and teacher, had a formal working
relationship with Charles I’s court painter.2 We know
Cooper was still working in Hoskins’ studio when de
Mayerne records his paint formulas in 1633/4,3 and
may have assisted his uncle in his regular copies of
Van Dyck’s oil portraits, some of which appear to have
been done under Van Dyck’s supervision. But while
there is little doubt that Cooper would have also met
Van Dyck, his own relationship with the great painter,
certainly after Cooper left Hoskins’ employ, was
probably less formal. This is not only borne out by the
existence of Cooper’s intimate portrait of Van Dyck’s
mistress, Margaret Lemon (cat. 6) but also through
the more indirect influence the oil painter’s portraits
exerted on Cooper’s miniatures. Although Cooper
evidently studied Van Dyck’s works at first hand, it
seems his response (a response presumably supported
by his patrons) was not to copy them directly (at least,
there are no certainly known copies by Cooper after
1 The provenance of this portrait may seem unusual – after all, it does not seem
natural that a husband would bequeath a portrait of his second wife (still
living) to the sister of his (deceased) first wife. No mention of this portrait is
made in the will of the Earl of Northumberland. The two wives were, however,
first cousins, and it is possible, as Carolyn Crookhall of Burghley House
suggests, that one of the five daughters from the first marriage or even the
countess herself may have given the miniature.
2 John Murdoch, ‘Hoskins and Crosses: Work in Progress’, in The Burlington
Magazine, vol. 140, (May, 1978), p. 287–8.
Van Dyck) but to reinterpret these same sitters into a
hand-held portrait, able to impart the same, impressive
visual impact on the viewer. It is also possible that
for Cooper to have continued making such exact
copies after he began his independent practice
(sometime around 1635–37) may have placed him in
direct competition with his uncle, or that Van Dyck
was happy to continue having his portraits copied
on a miniature scale only by Hoskins.4 It is clear,
however, that from the later 1630s onwards, Cooper
developed his own unique pictorial formula, within the
techniques and conventions of the portrait miniature,
for the many clients he shared with Van Dyck (see cats.
2 & 5).
The aura around the head in this miniature is
unusual for Cooper, but seems to be deliberate. It
may be intended to mimic that seen in Van Dyck’s
sketchiest and most fluid works, and is particularly
close to his recently discovered unfinished portrait
of Henrietta Maria as St Catherine (Philip Mould &
Company; fig.14). The layer of bare ground between
sitter and background creates a halo-like border, the
effect being one of dynamic movement. The distinction
between sitter and background gives an impression of
the sitter moving through the space. Whilst it is not
possible to ascertain whether this work is unfinished
or simply deliberately sketchy and naturalistic in
the pursuit of Van Dyckian realism, it is tempting to
suggest, given that the countess’s husband, Algernon
Percy, was one of Van Dyck’s most important patrons,
that Cooper was responding to a demand from his
client to deliver a portrait which captured Van Dyck’s
oil painting techniques in watercolour – a feeling one
senses again and again in his early work. The overall
effect is unsettlingly vibrant and quite unlike most
of the smooth, vigilantly described portraits Cooper
painted during the mid to late 1640s.
er
3 British Library, MS Sloane 2052 (folio 77/ 78 reverse).
4 Previous biographers of Cooper have traditionally dated his separate career
to 1642, the first date inscribed on a miniature (cat. 7) but his portraits of Lord
Holland (cat. 2) and a man thought to be William Killigrew (cat. 5) challenge
this assumption. It is possible that this group of portraits represent rare,
independent commissions, possibly engineered by a supportive Van Dyck who
would have met Cooper through his connection with his uncle and who may
have recognised the younger artist’s talent as something to nurture.
41
Cat. 9
John Hoskins the Elder (c.1590–1664/5)
Portrait of an Unknown Lady, 1646
Oval, 70mm (2 ¾ in.) high
Signed with monogram in gold and dated ‘J.H. / 1646’
Provenance
Mrs Fleischmann by 1912; The Ashcroft Collection;
The M. Papier Collection, no. 172;
Sotheby’s 7 May 1946, lot 58 (described as ‘a superb
miniature’); Bonhams, London, 23rd May 2007, Lot
258; Private Collection.
Lent by a Private Collection
Painted in 1646, the present work is one of the most
attractive examples to emerge from the workshop of
John Hoskins the elder. And yet, it may already be said
to suffer by comparison with the work of Cooper of the
same date.1 Initially trained as an oil painter, Hoskins
followed Nicholas Hilliard as the favoured limner
to the court during the 1620s and 1630s. Bainbrigg
42
Buckeridge states that Hoskins: “Was a very eminent
limner in the reign of King Charles I. whom he drew,
with his queen, and most of his court. He was bred a
face Painter in oil, but afterwards taking to miniature,
he far exceeded what he did before”.2
Hoskins’ early career as an oil painter has raised
questions about his training, although a portrait by
him in the Victoria and Albert Museum [P.6-1942],
dating to circa 1615, as well as a group of similarly
early portraits by him in the Royal Collection3, places
him working during the later careers of Nicholas
Hilliard (c.1547–1619) and Isaac Oliver (1565–1617)
and as a contemporary of Peter Oliver (c.1594–1647).
As painter at court for both James I and Charles
I, Hoskins was well placed to continue serving the
royal family, until civil war interrupted his potentially
brilliant court career.4
Hoskins’ response to the new mode of portraiture
introduced by Van Dyck in the early 1630s was partly
assimilated in his production of faithful copies, as well
as confident variants, of this artist’s work in miniature
(e.g. cat. 2). His early training as an oil painter may
have aided his understanding of Van Dyck’s novel
mastery in oil, as well an appreciation of his innovative
compositions. From the 1630s he also incorporated
this into his own ad vivum miniatures, presumably
aided by his brilliant young student, Samuel Cooper.
If born circa 1590, Hoskins the elder was in his
late teens when his nephews, Alexander and Samuel
Cooper, were placed in his care. If they began their
apprenticeship with him at the traditional age
of around fourteen, then they would have been
introduced to the art of miniature painting through
Hoskins in his capacity as a rising court artist of
the mid-1620s.5 It is not known when Alexander’s
apprenticeship, under Peter Oliver, began but Samuel
appears to have remained with Hoskins for the
duration of his training, possibly becoming an assistant
by the time Mayerne met him in 1633/4. Samuel’s
cousin, also called by the family name of ‘John’, was
probably born during the 1620s or 1630s, if the selfportrait in the collection of the Duke of Buccleuch
shows him at around the age of 25-35 in 1656. This
suggests a reasonably wide age gap between the
cousins Samuel and John of between ten and
twenty years.
Various art historians have attempted to tackle the
thorny question of if and how to separate John Hoskins
the younger as an artist independent of his father’s
studio. John Murdoch set out the two schools of
thought in his 1978 article in The Burlington Magazine.
As Murdoch asks at the beginning of his article: “How
many John Hoskins’ worked as miniature painters?”6
One new certainty is that John Hoskins the younger
worked as a professional miniature painter, as we find
1 Nonetheless, the present work has, on numerous occasions, prompted positive
responses from various experts, including Basil Long who in British
Miniaturists (London, 1966), p. 226, singled it out as ‘particularly good’. The
fresh condition, no doubt preserved by the protective fruitwood case, makes it
an exceptional survival.
towards an English School (3rd edition of 1754; from 1969 Cornmarket
facimile): biography of John Hoskins, p.389.
3 See, for example, a portrait of a lady in the Royal Collection [RCIN 420983],
datable to 1612–15.
4 Portraits of James I and Charles I by John Hoskins the elder are in the Victoria
and Albert Museum [P.27–1954] and [P.39–1942].
5 It was not until 1640 that Hoskins was awarded an official annuity of £200 per
him listed as ‘Mr. Hoskins’, alongside well-known
limner’s names of Mr. Cross (Peter Cross)/ Mr. Dixon
(Nicholas Dixon)/ Mr. Gibson (Richard Gibson) in
the publication Collection for Improvement of
Husbandry and Trade in 1695, long after his father’s
death in 1664/5.
Unfortunately, with the two Hoskins, there is not a
clear technical divide between their works and, aside
from a few examples and one likely self-portrait, the
work of the elder and younger artists merge into an
indistinguishable group.7 The crux of the problem
is that miniatures from the studio of John Hoskins
all bear similar signatures, possibly to attempt the
continuation of a ‘brand’, which began in the 1620s
and lasted beyond the originator’s death in 1664/5.
This portrait of a young lady, dated 1646, is
probably too early to be the work of Hoskins the
younger. Murdoch, however, who suggests an
earlier birth date for Hoskins the younger of circa
1617–1620, states that after the mid-1640s examples
of the work of the elder Hoskins are increasingly rare.
Interestingly, the portrait compares closely to that of
an unknown man (cat. 35) as well as the 1656 selfportrait in the Buccleuch collection (see Fig. 35a),
potentially showing how stylistically close father and
son were.8 With evidence now emerging of Hoskins
the younger advertising as a professional limner, and
with the exception of the self-portrait, it is perhaps
only possible to completely isolate the work of Hoskins
the younger after the death of his father in 1664/5.
Contemporary registrars certainly made a distinction
between the two artists; for example in the ‘Estimate’
of circa 1683 the portrait of ‘My Lord of Holland’ is
given to ‘Old Hoskins’.9
er
6
7
8
9
annum – he only received one payment of this before civil war halted
his salary.
John Murdoch, ‘Hoskins’ and Crosses Work in Progress’, in The Burlington
Magazine, vol. 120, no. 902 (May, 1978), p.284.
Buccleuch Collection, a portrait of a young man signed and dated 1656 and
inscribed ‘Ipse’
It should be remembered that this is also the case with the work of father and
son Isaac and Peter Oliver, as well as many masters and pupils/ assistants (for
example, Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony Van Dyck).
Buckminster Park Archive, Estimate of Pictures in Ham House, c.1683, No.
122 (cat. 2, although this work is now thought to be the hand of Samuel
Cooper, working in the studio of John Hoskins)
43
Cat. 10
Samuel Cooper
Portrait of Frances Manners, Countess of Exeter (c.1636–60), c.1646
Provenance
Presumably by descent in the Burghley family; Noted
in an inventory (Catalogue of Pictures at Burghley
House, Northamptonshire, 1954, by The
Marchioness of Exeter), but dated in 1950 as (Red
Drawing Room Miniature Table), no. 25, ‘A Countess
of Exeter – probably Frances (Manners) wife of 4th
Earl – on a label on the back “Lady Exeter” in 9th
Earl’s writing’.
Lent by The Burghley House Collection (MIN 023)
This portrait of Frances Manners may have been
painted around the time of her marriage to John Cecil,
4th Earl of Exeter (styled Lord Burghley from 1640–
43) in 1646, when she was 16 years of age.
They later had two children – John Cecil (c.1648–1700,
who became 5th Earl of Exeter) and Lady Frances
Cecil (d.1694).1
In painting the head of the young Frances, Cooper
again adopted a Van Dyckian formula; the sitter turned
and gazing to the side. Aided by the slightly raised
right arm of the sitter, this has creates a dynamic sense
of movement. A double portrait at Burghley of John
4th Earl of Exeter and his wife, which is catalogued
as ‘school of Van Dyck’, shows the sitter in a similar
pose and dress. In this composition, however, her head
is more directly turned towards the viewer. Another
portrait of Frances, her head in similar profile, is also
at Burghley and is attributed to Jacques D’Agar
(1642–1715).
An indication of Cooper’s rising status can be found
in the rather leaden and formulaic 1647 portrait of
the sitter’s husband by John Hoskins the elder also at
Burghley. Although the Hoskins has suffered greatly in
condition, it lacks entirely the brilliance of his pupil’s
portrait of the sitter’s wife. Although Cooper’s portrait
is also faded (particularly in the crimson of the sitter’s
dress), the electrifying blue dash in the sky and the
naturalistic details of the shadows under the sitter’s
curls help lift it into new territory for this art form.
er
1 An interesting connection can be made with the second wife of the 4th Earl
of Exeter, Lady Mary Fane (1639–81), daughter of Mildmay Fane, 2nd Earl
of Westmorland (1602–66) and Cooper. Cat. 43 is a drawing by Cooper of
Thomas Alcock, preceptor (tutor), who, as recorded by Vertue, was at the Earl
of Westmorland’s house at Apethorpe, Northamptonshire (English Heritage),
at the time of the sketch.
44
45
Cat. 11
Samuel Cooper
Portrait of John Belasyse, 1st Baron Belasyse (bap.1615–89), 1646
Signed ‘S.C’ and dated ‘1646’ lower left
Provenance
Alfred Aaron de Pass (1861–1952);
Bequeathed to Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge in
memory of his son, Crispin de Pass, 1933.
Lent by the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum,
Cambridge (Accesion no. 2786)
This miniature, painted in 1646, is one of two portraits
of Belasyse by Cooper, a larger version being in the
collection of the Duke of Buccleuch (fig. 15). The
larger, and slightly later portrait shows Belasyse with
his right arm raised, holding a baton, in a pose that is
Van Dyckian, but as is often the case with Cooper not
actually a direct copy of a pose Van Dyck used. The
Buccleuch version also shows the sitter slightly more in
46
profile, and with a scar on his forehead, doubtless won
in battle during the Civil War.
Belasyse was painted by Van Dyck in c.1636 (Private
Collection, Italy), and later, in 1669, by John Michael
Wright (Burton Constable Hall). The very convincing
likeness between these three portraits, as well as the
traditional identification as Belasyse of both versions of
the Cooper miniature,1 allow us to safely rule out the
concerns of the late Sir Oliver Millar, who doubted the
identity.
John Belasyse was the second son of Thomas
Belasyse, 1st Viscount Fauconberg of Henknowle
(1577–1653) and Barbara Cholmley (c.1580–1619). A
notable Royalist, he took part in a number of battles,
including Edgehill, where he commanded a brigade
of infantry. After a defeat at Selby, Belasyse was
captured and imprisoned in the Tower, and charged
with High Treason. However, following a prison
exchange in January 1645 he was released and created
Baron Belasyse of Worlaby. It seems extraordinary to
(Fig. 15) Samuel Cooper, Portrait of John, 1st Baron Belasyse. In this larger, and
slightly later portrait, Belasyse proudly displays a scar, doubtless caused by some
engagement in the Civil War.
think that the likes of Belasyse were visiting Cooper
for their portrait in 1646, and perhaps meeting their
Parliamentary foes in the artist’s studio.
After the King’s execution in 1649, Belasyse
remained a loyal Royalist and was a founding member
of the Sealed Knot – a secretive organisation which
plotted for the Restoration of Charles II. Following the
coronation in 1661, he was appointed Lord-Lieutenant
of the East Riding, Captain of the Gentleman
Pensioners and Governor of Kingston upon Hull,
although he lost these offices in 1673, following his
refusal (as a Catholic) to complete the Test Acts. He
was arrested and only released when the Duke of
York paid a considerable £30,000 bail. Belasyse was
appointed to the Privy Council by James II and was
1st Lord Commissioner of the Treasury in 1687, highly
controversial given his religion, and as such was one
of the appointments that gave rise to the anti-Catholic
unrest which, ultimately, led to James’s expulsion
in 1688.
lh
1 The Buccleuch miniature was first exhibited at the Exhibition of British Art
c.1000–1860; exh. cat. Royal Academy of Arts (London, 1934), p. 347, where it
was called Belasyse.
47
Cat. 12
Samuel Cooper
Portrait of a Lady called Sarah Foote, later Mrs John Lewis, 1647
Watercolour on vellum laid down on card
Signed with initials and dated ‘S.C. / 1647’
Provenance
Walter Samuel, 2nd Viscount Bearsted; By descent to
his granddaughter The Hon. Felicity Samuel by 1974;
By whom presumably sold at Christie’s, London, 27
March 1984, lot 298 as ‘The property of a descendant
of the 2nd Viscount Bearsted’; The Gordon Collection
by whom sold Christies, London 20th November
2007, lot. 23; Philip Mould & Company; UK Private
Collection.
This is one of Cooper’s most attractive sitters. In the
1974 catalogue of the Cooper exhibition held at the
National Portrait Gallery (NPG),1 the sitter in this
miniature was called Sarah Foote, wife of Sir John
Lewis, 1st Bt. in or before 1644 (who was also painted
by Cooper, Private Collection).2 The date of Foote’s
birth is uncertain, but she was probably born in about
1628. This would make her 19 in the present portrait.
She had two daughters by her first marriage; the elder,
Elizabeth, married Theophilus Hastings, 7th Earl of
Huntingdon; the younger daughter, Mary, married
Robert Leke, 3rd Earl of Scarsdale. Sarah was married
for a second time in 1660 to Denzil Onslow of Pirford,
Surrey, a commissioner in the Navy.
As well as emphasising the luminescent qualities of
the magnificent blue gown, the dark, almost black,
background had the dual purpose of highlighting
the pale skin of the sitter in line with the fashion of
the day; the same can perhaps be assumed for the
inclusion of the black jewel at her breast. We can see
this reflected in a poem published by Robert Herrick
in 1648 titled Carcanet; a short poem in which he
marvels at the effect a (Jet) black necklace has on the
appearance of his mistress’s complexion; ‘… Then
think how wrapt was I to see/ My Jet t’enthrall
such Ivorie’.3
lh
1 Daphne Foskett, Samuel Cooper and his contemporaries, exh. cat., National
Portrait Gallery (London 1974) no. 30. The miniature was also published in
Daphne Foskett, Samuel Cooper (1609–1672), (London, 1974), , p. 109.
2 In an undated miniature, repro. ibid, no. 54.
48
3 R. Herrick, Hesperide, or The Works Both Humane and Divine (London,
1648). p.13 in A. Ribeiro, Fashion and Fiction, (New Haven and London,
2005), p.135.
49
Cat. 13
Samuel Cooper
Portrait of a Lady, traditionally identified as ‘Lady Leigh’ or ‘Lady Margaret Ley’, 1648
Signed with initials and dated lower right ‘SC/1648’
Provenance
Charles Sackville Bale Esq; His sale Christie’s, London,
23rd May 1881, lot.1428 as ‘Lady Margaret Ley’; Bt
by William Boore (Art Dealer); Possibly then ‘Sir
Harry Edwards’; By whom, possibly, sold Christie’s,
London, 29th June 1897, lot.53 as ‘Lady Margaret
Ley’ (a Cooper signed and dated 1648), for £54.12.0;
Possibly bt. ‘Hodgkins’; Charles Fairfax Murray by
1914; Alfred Aaron de Pass (1861–1952); By whom
bequeathed to Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge in
memory of his son Crispin de Pass, 1933.
Cambridge (Object no. 3787)
50
This miniature is probably the best example of a
composition Cooper repeated a number of times in the
1640s, although he seems to have varied the backdrop
each time.1 While he rarely copied Van Dyck’s exact
compositions for his male sitters, Cooper was evidently
happy to do so for his female patrons; the composition
here is an exact copy, right down to the curves and
folds of the fabric, and the grip of the hand, of Van
Dyck’s Frances, Lady Brockhurst, later Countess of
Dorset (d.1687; Knole, Kent), painted in c.1637. A
portrait by Cooper of An Unknown Lady, previously
thought to be Jemima, Countess of Sandwich, dated
1647 (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge) follows the
rocky outcrop in Van Dyck’s portrait exactly. That
Cooper was also copying Van Dyck’s drapery even for
his portrait of Oliver Cromwell’s wife in 1651 (cat. 19)
gives an idea of his reliance on Van Dyck’s tried-andtested portrait formulas. We can perhaps consider such
a repetition of stock poses as evidence of the sheer
demand for Cooper’s portraits during this time, and
51
that he was the nearest thing to Van Dyck available.
In this light, it is notable that Peter Lely’s portraits of
1640s, Van Dyck’s ultimate successor as court painter,
were frequently much less reliant on Van Dyck’s
compositions, and retained much of Lely’s Dutch
origins.
The first published record of the sitter’s identity can
be traced back to when this miniature was exhibited
at the South Kensington Museum (now the V&A) in
1865, as Lady Leigh.2 However, by the time it was sold
at Christie’s in 1881, the identity had been changed
to the more specific ‘Lady Margaret Ley’, wife of
Captain John Hobson (who served in Cromwell’s
army) and a younger daughter of James Ley, 1st
Earl of Marlborough (d.1629). This Margaret was
the subject of a sonnet by John Milton, and also his
neighbour.3 Unfortunately, no date of birth is known
for Lady Margaret Ley.4 It has since been suggested5
that the sitter here bears a resemblance to a portrait,
thought to be by Gerard Soest, of an Elizabeth Tuchet,
daughter of the 1st Earl of Castlehaven, who married
a George Legh, and who would therefore be another
‘Lady Legh’ of sorts.6 But the dates for this sitter (she
married in about 1601, and George Legh died in
1617), do not allow such an identification.7 Another
possible candidate for a ‘Lady Leigh’ is Jane, second
wife of Sir Thomas Leigh MP (1616–62), who was the
daughter of Thomas Fitzmaurice, 18th Baron of Kerry
(1574–1630) by his second wife (whom he married in
1615).
Interestingly, it appears that the last digit in the date
is written as a conjoined ‘7/8’, an adjustment which
also occurs in another miniature of the same date by
Cooper now in the Arturi-Philips Collection. It is
likely that Cooper was betraying some uncertainty at
this time whether to use the new or old style of dating,
as revealed on the back of his Self-Portrait (cat. 1). If
so, then we can narrow down the date of the present
miniature to between January and March 1648.
lh & bg
Cat. 14
Samuel Cooper
Portrait of a Lady, thought to be ‘Lady Leigh’, 1648
Signed and dated centre right ‘S.C/1648’
Provenance
Possibly ‘Sir Harry Edwards’; By whom, possibly, sold
Christie’s, London, 29th June 1897, lot 53 as ‘Lady
Margaret Ley’ (a Cooper signed and dated 1648), for
£54.12.0; Possibly bt. ‘Hodgkins’; George Salting
(1835–1909); By whom bequeathed to V&A, 1910.
Lent by the Victoria and Albert Museum, London
(P114–1910)
1 See as comparative examples: Portrait of a Lady, called Elizabeth, Countess
of Morton, c.1645 sold at Sotheby’s, 11.07.1991; Portrait of an Unknown Lady,
1646, The Foundation Custodia, Paris; Jemima, Countess of Sandwich, 1647,
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
2 ‘Portrait Miniatures Loan Exhibition’, South Kensington Museum, June 1865,
no.1647. There was a pastel of this miniature ‘in identically the same dress,
colours and all’ inscribed on the mount ‘Lady Leigh’, which by 1935 was in
the collection of a Philip James. Without seeing the pastel (stated to be 17th
century) and the inscription, there is unfortunately no way of telling how long
this identification has stood (letter from Philip James to Sir Sydney Cockerell
52
dated 15th July 1935 in item folder, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge).
3 ‘Sonnet X – To the Lady Margaret Ley’. See Richard Bradford, John Milton
(Oxford, 2001), p. 81.
4 This identification was followed in Daphne Foskett, Samuel Cooper and his
contemporaries, exh. cat., National Portrait Gallery (London, 1974), no. 31.
5 R.L. Bayne-Powell, Catalogue of Portrait Miniatures in the Fitzwilliam Museum
Cambridge (Cambridge, 1985), p.33.
6 The Fitzwilliam currently identifies the portrait as this Mrs Elizabeth Leigh.
7 Sold Sotheby’s, 20th January 1971, lot 57. The painting is inscribed with the
identity, although this must also be erroneous.
known for certain. The provenance and identification
is complicated by the presence of two miniatures of
this date, and of a similar size, which have at various
times been called ‘Lady Leigh’. The 1648 Cooper
identified as ‘Lady Margaret Ley’ and sold at Christie’s
in 1897 (see provenance), referred to by Foster,1
most likely refers to cat. 13, but may also relate to the
present miniature. For the various candidates for a
‘Lady Leigh’ see cat. 13.2
The composition is unique for Cooper. The foliage
seen in the background is a more unusual feature of
Cooper’s work and is comparable to that in the portrait
of Anne, Countess of Morton, Countess of Morton,
painted around the same time, c.1650.3
At the time of its bequest in 1910 the sitter was given
as ‘Lady Leigh’, although the basis for this title is not
lh
Century, 2 vols., (London, 1914–16), vol. 1, p. 44. Supplementary vol., p.165.
2 Although her birth date is not known for certain, she was the second child
of Patrick FitzMaurice, 17th Baron Kerry and Honor Fitzgerald, the fifth child
being born in 1633.
Portrait Gallery (London, 1974), no. 53 (lent by E. Grosvenor Paine, Esq.,
Oxford, Mississippi).
53
Cat. 15
Samuel Cooper
Elizabeth, Lady Capel (or Capell; née Morrison)1 (1609/10–61), later 1640s
Signed with initials ‘SC’ and dated ‘164–’
Provenance
Anonymous vendor, Christie’s, London, 27th June
1978, lot 35; Anonymous vendor, Sotheby’s, London,
9th April 1992, lot 130.
Dating to the last years of the 1640s, this portrait of
Elizabeth, wife of Arthur Capel, 1st Baron Capel of
Hadham, was probably painted for her husband.2 His
loyal and heroic stance as a Royalist ended with his
execution in 1649, only months after that of the King.
Cooper’s portrait of Elizabeth is quite different
from (and infinitely better than) that of her with her
husband and children painted by Cornelius Johnson
in around 1640 (National Portrait Gallery, London,
4759). Some years into the war, and physically
separated from her husband, it is not too fanciful to
here see worry and strain reflected in her face.3 In
1648 she had to endure reports that her sickly son
Arthur, then aged just 16, was carried around the
borders of Colchester to convince his father to
surrender the place.
Compared to the bright, clear portraits of ladies by
Cooper of the later 1640s, this image is altogether more
sober, although it does employ the lively half drapery,
half landscape background format he was using at
this time.
Although she did not live quite long enough to
witness it,4 Elizabeth’s family were rewarded for their
loyalty to the crown in April 1661, when her eldest son
Arthur (1631–83) was created Earl of Essex. He had
married Lady Elizabeth Percy (1636–1718), daughter
1 She was daughter and heir of Sir Charles Morrison of Cassiobury in
Hertfordshire.
2 The Capel family were major patrons of Sir Peter Lely and it is interesting to
note both artists, perhaps naturally, supported by the same families.
3 From 1642, when Charles called his loyal supporters to York, the couple
endured long periods apart. This miniature may have been painted just prior
54
of Lady Anne Cecil. The early death of Elizabeth
Percy’s mother, when she was only a year old, meant
that she was brought up under the care of her father’s
second wife, Elizabeth, Countess of Northumberland
(cat. 8).
er
to Capel’s departure to Scilly and Jersey to accompany the Prince of Wales into
exile in 1646. Periods of fighting followed, with her husband finally captured
and imprisoned in 1648.
4 Elizabeth died in January 1661 and was buried beside her husband at
Hadham.
55
Cat. 16
Samuel Cooper
Portrait of Montague Bertie, 2nd Earl of Lindsey (1607/8–66), 1649
Oval, 59 mm (2 5/16 in) high
Signed ‘SC’ intertwined and dated ‘1649’ centre left
Provenance
John Lumsden Propert Collection by 1901; Charles
Fairfax Murray; His sale Christies, London, 17th
December 1917, lot 28; Leonard Daneham Cunliffe;
By whom bequeathed to Fitzwilliam Museum
Cambridge, 1937.
Cambridge (Accession no. 3824)1
Montague Bertie, 2nd Earl of Lindsey was the son of
Robert Bertie, 1st Earl of Lindsey (1582–1942) and
Elizabeth Montagu (bap.1586–1654). Lindsey was a
Royalist army officer, finding the king’s favour early in
life and by 1634 was appointed Gentleman of the Privy
Chamber and Warden of Waltham Forest. Lindsey
commanded the Life Guards at the Battle of Edgehill
on 23rd October 1642, however, following the mortal
wounding of his father surrendered his troops, and was
subsequently imprisoned in Warwick Castle, where
he wrote Declaration and Justification pledging loyalty
to the king. Following his release in July 1643, as a
result of a prisoner exchange, Lindsey joined the king
in Oxford where, among other duties, he acted as a
commissioner in numerous peace treaties while trying
to negotiate between the king and Parliament.2 It was
these latter duties that no doubt saved Lindsey from
execution following the Royalists’ ultimate defeat.
(Fig. 16) John Hoskins the elder, Portrait of Montague, 2nd Earl of Lindsey.
Hoskins’ portrait is a useful comparison to Cooper’s, and demonstrates the
latter’s clear superiority.
Lindsey attended to the king during his trial and was
one of four supporters who accompanied the king’s
body to Windsor for burial. During the Interregnum
Lindsey retired into the shadows until the Restoration
when he resurfaced and was appointed Privy
Councillor and awarded the Order of the Garter.
In 1650 Lindsey also sat for John Hoskins for a very
similar portrait (Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry,
fig. 16), which makes for an interesting comparison.
The likeness is very close between the Hoskins and
Cooper, but the Cooper undeniably conveys a more
animated characterisation. The Cooper portrait also
exists in an unsigned copy of the present work at
Grimsthorpe Castle, Lincolnshire, which, although
not inspected first hand by the present writer, may well
be autograph.
lh
1 R.L. Bayne-Powell, Catalogue of Portrait Miniatures in the Fitzwilliam
Museum Cambridge (Cambridge, 1985), p. 33.
2 While in Oxford Lindsey sat to William Dobson c.1643.
56
57
Oliver Cromwell
and The Interregnum
Cat. 17
(Fig. 17) Eng. School after Cooper, Portrait of Oliver Cromwell. A rare,
and probably unique, copy of Cooper’s first portrait of Cromwell.
Samuel Cooper
Portrait of Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658), 1649
57 mm (2 ¼ in.) high
Signed with initials ‘SC’ and dated ‘1649’, lower right.
Provenance
Spencer-Churchill Collection, Northwick Park, as
a portrait of Colonel Robert Lilburne; with Charles
Woollett & Son in 1966 (as Lilburne); Sotheby’s,
London, 4th July 1983, lot 57, as a portrait of
Cromwell, sold for £23,500; Bt. Dr Pohl; By whom
sold to the National Portrait Gallery, London.
Lent by the National Portrait Gallery, London
(NPG 5589)
Ever since Henry VII had put his profile likeness on
the coinage in 1504, replacing the generic royal head
used for centuries before, English kings had believed
that the ability to circulate an accurate likeness was
a key part of reinforcing their individual authority.
60
Consequently, and especially in the absence of any
religious art after the Reformation, the path of English
art history was largely set by the monarch’s interest in
the painting of their portrait. From Henry VIII and
Holbein to Charles I and Van Dyck, the key artists
of the period saw their careers dominated by royal
patronage and desire.
It so happened, however, that Samuel Cooper’s
career was not as dominated by such pressures as
one might think. The outbreak of the Civil War
in 1642 led to the removal of the Court and its
patronage to Oxford, just as Cooper was establishing
his independent practice in London; while after
Parliament’s victory it was some time before a single
individual – eventually Oliver Cromwell – became
established at the head of the new republican
government, and for anything like a new ‘court’
to emerge.
Although we have come to see Cooper’s oeuvre
as dominated by his portraits of Cromwell, there are
in fact surprisingly few of them, given Cromwell’s
ultimate position as Lord Protector. Cromwell, it
seems, was not only reluctant to sit for his portrait,
but was (at least at first) not entirely comfortable with
the widespread public dissemination of his image.
When the medallist Thomas Simon was commissioned
by Parliament to make a commemorative medal of
Cromwell’s victory over the Scots at Dunbar in 1650,
for example, Cromwell asked Simon (unsuccessfully)
to ‘spare the having of my Effigies’ on it.1
Cromwell’s evident disinclination to be associated
with the imagery of royalty or government must
account for the surprisingly private nature of this
portrait, on loan from the National Portrait Gallery,
London, which is Cooper’s first portrait of him. We can
be reasonably sure that this miniature, dated 1649, was
not intended to be used as a public image by the almost
complete absence of any copies, prints or derivations
taken from it. Only a small oil-on-panel copy of the
head, with a larger body, is known, which belongs to
the Hermitage in St Petersburg (fig. 17). Vertue does
not record Cooper’s miniature, and further proof of
its limited circulation can be seen in the remarkable
fact that before its acquisition by the National Portrait
Gallery in 1983, it had been incorrectly identified as
the Regicide Colonel Robert Lilburne.
It is worth speculating on the precise date of the
miniature. The inscription on the back of Cooper’s
self-portrait, cat. 1, would appear to suggest that,
for some time in the 1640s at least, Cooper’s dates
followed the old style of dating, by which the new
year began on 25th March. If so, then the date on the
present miniature means the likeness was certainly
taken after the execution of Charles I, which took
place on 30th January 1648 ‘old style’, and before
Cromwell left London for his campaigns in Ireland and
Scotland in July 1649.
If the miniature was painted after Charles’s
execution, then the portrait is perhaps worth noting
for what it is not; there is no attempt at triumphalism
61
or glorification, no landscape or other background,
only the plainest armour, with no baton and no Van
Dyckian compositional flourish, such as a raised arm
or hand. In other words, there is little to suggest that
this was the most powerful man of the age. Given
that Cooper, like all good portraitists, was more
than capable of elevating his sitters, the temptation
must be to attribute the miniature’s simplicity to
the circumstances of the commission, and thus to
Cromwell, rather than Cooper.
Here, the earliest evidence that Cooper was
working for Cromwell is particularly interesting; on
7th November 1650, Miles Wodshawe wrote to his
employer, the book collector Edward, 2nd Viscount
Conway;
I spoke to Mr. Cooper, the painter, who desires
you to excuse him one month longer, as he has
some work to finish for Lord General Cromwell
and his family.
The mention of Cromwell’s family, and the similarly
restrained portrait of cat. 19, Cromwell’s wife, further
suggests that the 1649 miniature of Cromwell was
part of a collection of portraits commissioned for
private use.2
The miniature was formerly in the SpencerChurchill collection at Northwick Park, where Sir
Oliver Millar saw it in 1956. The miniature was at that
time misidentified, and was sold from the SpencerChurchill collection as Robert Lilburne by Charles
Woollett & Son on 27th January 1966. It was first
published as Cromwell when sold at Sotheby’s in
London on 4th July 1983, estimated at £6–8,000,
whereupon the National Portrait Gallery determined
to acquire it. The Gallery was unfortunately outbid at
£25,721, but the buyer, the noted collector Dr Pohl,
agreed ‘nobly’ (as the Gallery records) to let the nation
have it immediately after the sale, for a small profit.
Cat. 18
bg
Samuel Cooper
Portrait of Sir Thomas Rivers (c.1625–57), 1650
54 mm (2 1/8 in.) high
Signed ‘SC’ and dated ‘1650’
Provenance
By descent in the sitter’s family; Mrs P.B.K. Dangerfield
of Baltimore; Sotheby’s, London, 9th February 1961,
lot 27.
Sir Thomas Rivers of Chafford (near Penshurst), 2nd
Bt (c.1625–57) was the son of James Rivers (1603–41)
and Charity, the daughter of Sir John Shurely; he
was the grandson and heir of Sir John Rivers, 1st Bt
1 David Piper, ‘The Contemporary Portraits of Oliver Cromwell’, in The
Walpole Society, vol.34, 1952–54 (Glasgow, 1958), p. 33.
2 Basil Long, British Miniaturists (London, 1929), p. 85. A subsequent letter
from Woodshawe to Conway, dated 28th November 1650, suggests that the
artist had by then finished his work for the Cromwells, for ‘the lady’ whom
Conway wished to have painted was scheduled to sit ‘next Tuesday’. But there
62
(c.1579–1651), served as one of the MPs for Sussex in
the first Protectorate Parliament of 1656–7, and died
unmarried in 1657, when the baronetcy passed to his
younger brother.
Another miniature of the same sitter, ascribed to
Cooper and supposedly signed S.C. (Bonhams 22nd
March 1994, when it was erroneously described as
being of Thomas Savage, 3rd Earl Rivers c.1628–94),
was either extensively over-painted by a later hand
or, arguably, is not by Cooper. A head and shoulders
portrait of Sir Thomas by Lely (Sotheby’s 30th
November 2000) may have been the source for the
second miniature.
ls
appears to have been a delay of some kind, for a subsequent letter of 9th
October adds that; ‘Mr Cooper assures me that on the lady’s return, he will
not fail to do [the miniature] for the credit of himself and her. Col.
Ashburnham has promised that on her return from the West Country, she shall
sit a week together.’ See Mary Anne Everett Green ed., Calendar of State
Papers Domestic: Interregnum, 1650 (London, 1876), vol. 11.
63
Cat. 19
(Fig. 18) Van Dyck, Portrait of An Unknown Lady. In a clear sign
of his debt to Van Dyck, Cooper has followed exactly Van Dyck’s
treatment of the shawl in this portrait, despite it being painted
some 15 years earlier.
Samuel Cooper
Portrait of Elizabeth Bourchier, wife of Oliver Cromwell (1598–1665), 1651
71 mm (2 ¾ in.) high
Signed and dated lower left, ‘S.C. / 1651’
Provenance
Seen in the collection of Sir Thomas Frankland 2nd
Bt (1665–1726); who married Elizabeth Russell,
daughter of Frances, Lady Russell (1638–1720), by
George Vertue in 1736; Thence by descent until sold
in 1862 for £300 (together with Cooper’s miniatures of
Cromwell’s wife and one of his daughters, Elizabeth)
by a solicitor acting for a lady known to the Frankland
family to P. & D. Colnaghi and Co., London; From
whom purchased in 1862 by Walter Francis, 5th Duke
of Buccleuch and 7th Duke of Queensberry; Thence
by family descent.
Lent by His Grace the Duke of Buccleuch &
Queensberry KBE, DL
64
Cooper’s finished miniature of Cromwell’s wife,
Elizabeth Bourchier, which is signed and dated 1651,
has long been overshadowed by the famous portrait
miniature modello of her husband. However, it remains
a work of rich colouring and strong characterisation
from Cooper’s key phase of work during the early
years of the Protectorate. It is known that Cooper
was finishing some miniatures of Cromwell and his
family towards the end of 1650, and it is highly likely
that the portrait of his wife was painted at that time.1
The miniature highlights Cooper’s use of Van Dyck’s
portraits for his compositions, especially for his female
sitters of the 1640s and 1650s, for the drapery worn
here by Elizabeth Cromwell is copied exactly from a
c.1636 Van Dyck portrait of an unknown lady in the
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston (fig. 18).
Elizabeth Bourchier was the daughter of a wealthy
London fur and leather merchant Sir James Bourchier
and his wife Frances. In 1620 she married Oliver
Cromwell at the City of London church of St Giles
Cripplegate. The marriage appears to have been a
happy one and the couple had nine children, eight
of whom reached adulthood. After December 1653
she was sometimes known as ‘Her Highness the
Lady Protectress’, but she did not exercise political
influence. After the death of her husband in 1658 and
the Restoration of Charles II she resisted vituperative
attacks against her supposed corruption, and lived
quietly at Narborough (now called Northborough) in
Northamptonshire, the home of John Claypole, who
had married one of her daughters Elizabeth (1625–58).
The famous unfinished miniature of Oliver
Cromwell had been purchased by the 5th Duke of
1 Letter from Miles Woodhaye of 7 November 1650 to Lord Conway, quoted in
Basil Long, British Miniaturists, (London, 1929), p. 85.
2 Andrew McKay, Catalogue of the Miniatures in Montagu House belonging to
the Duke of Buccleuch, 2nd edn (London, 1899) (The Collection of Miniatures
Buccleuch via the art dealers Messrs Colnaghi from
a connection of the Frankland family with two other
miniatures of the Lord Protector’s wife and one of
his daughters Elizabeth, together with three coins
of Cromwell and a pair of tiny embroidered buttons
or sleeve-links belonging to the Lord Protector. The
whole group of objects was arranged together in a
special frame, to which was fitted a roller blind, and
displayed in the Buccleuch family’s London residence
at Montagu House in Whitehall. This assemblage of
items was kept in a rosewood box, which was displayed
in a cabinet at the East End of the West Drawing Room
at Montagu House, where the Buccleuch Collection
remained until the First World War.2
The circumstances of the purchase in 1862 of the
Cromwell group of three miniatures, three coins3 and
the pair of embroidered sleeve-links are described in a
letter from Andrew McKay, the miniatures specialist at
the London art dealer Colnaghi, sent to the 6th Duke
of Buccleuch on 7th November 1897:
the case containing Cromwell’s portrait, his wife’s
and Miss Claypole’s was brought one forenoon to
us some 35 years since by a solicitor who stated that
he was instructed by a client – a lady – to offer the
collection to us for £300. The lawyer said that the
owner obtained it through some connection with
the Frankland family. A few days afterwards Sir
[-----] Frankland called in Pall Mall East and
desired to purchase the miniatures. Your Grace’s
father, who had already bought them for £325
agreed to give them up but Sir [-----] Frankland
objected to the price. The case is worth £1,000
or £1,200!3
sl
in Montagu House, 1st edn 1896), p. 175.
3 The three Cromwellian coins, all designed by Thomas Simon, are a gold broad
of 1656, a silver crown and silver broad both of 1658, cf. London 1974, p. 135
4 Letter in the Buccleuch archive at Bowhill.
65
Cat. 20
Samuel Cooper
Portrait of a Young Man wearing armour, previously
thought to be Richard Cromwell (1626–1712), 1651
Oval, 64mm (2 ½ in.) high
Signed, lower left, ‘S.C’/ 1651
Provenance
Mrs S. Fielding; Sotheby’s, London, 25th May 1964,
lot.4 as ‘Perhaps Richard Cromwell’; Bt. by a ‘Mr.
Woolett’ £360; Karin Henninger-Tavcar Collection;
With D.S. Lavender Antiques, London; Arturi-Phillips
Collection.
The first suggestion that the sitter here was Richard
Cromwell appears to come in 1964, when the
miniature appeared at a Sotheby’s auction as; ‘A Fine
Miniature of a Young Man, perhaps Richard Cromwell’.1
Although the iconography of Richard Cromwell is
quite confused, it is acknowledged that he was fairhaired,2 as seen in the portrait of him by an unknown
artist in the National Portrait Gallery (NPG 4350).
The identification as Richard Cromwell was probably
attached to the present portrait due to it being painted
in the same year Cooper depicted Oliver Cromwell’s
wife, Elizabeth Bourchier (Cat. 19).
lh
1 See provenance.
2 J. Waylen and J.G. Cromwell, The House of Cromwell: A Genealogical
History of the Family and Descendants of the Protector, 2nd ed, (London,
1897) p. 30.
66
67
Cat. 21
Cat. 22
Samuel Cooper
Portrait of Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658), c.1653
Sir Peter Lely (1618–80)
Portrait of Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658), c.1654
Provenance
The artist; Bought in 1658 by Richard Cromwell, for,
according to Vertue, £100; given by him to his sister
Mary Cromwell, Lady Fauconberg (1637–1713);
Given by her to her nephew by marriage, Sir Thomas
Frankland 2nd Bt. (1665–1726), who married
Elizabeth Russell, daughter of Frances, Lady Russell
(1638–1720), Oliver Cromwell’s younger daughter;
68
Thence by descent until sold in 1862 for £300
(together with Cooper’s miniatures of Cromwell’s wife
and one of their daughters, Elizabeth, who married
John Claypole) by a solicitor acting for a lady known
to the Frankland family to P. & D. Colnaghi and Co.,
London; From whom purchased in 1862 by Walter
Francis, 5th Duke of Buccleuch and 7th Duke of
Queensberry; Thence by family descent.
Oil on canvas, 775 x 629 mm (30 ½ x 24 ¾ in.)
Signed lower centre ‘PLely. fe’, the ‘PL’ in monogram.
Provenance
Collection of William Powlett, according to the
engraving by Faber (1735 & 1740);
By 1750 (when the print was re-issued) in the
collection of Lord John Cavendish;
By descent until sold by the Hon. J.C.C. Cavendish,
Sotheby’s 22nd June 1949, lot 46; presented to
Birmingham Art Gallery by H.J. Spiller Ltd, 1949.
Lent by Birmingham Museums Trust (Accession
no. 1949P27)
Lent by His Grace the Duke of Buccleuch and
Queensberry, KBE, DL
69
Cat. 23
Samuel Cooper
Portrait of Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658), 1657
104 mm (4 in.) high
Signed centre right, ‘SC’ and dated ‘1657’
Provenance
The Viscounts Harcourt; By descent until sold,
Sotheby’s, London, 6th June 2007, lot 151, for
£535,200; Acquired at the sale by Compton Verney.
Lent by Compton Verney
70
Cat. 21, on loan from the Duke of Buccleuch and
Queensberry, must rank as one of the finest portraits
ever painted in Britain. Undated and unfinished, it is
displayed here alongside the oil portrait by Peter Lely
to which it closely relates (cat. 22). The comparison
between them, and also with Cooper’s earlier 1649
portrait of Cromwell, allows us to unravel some of
the confusion that has often surrounded Cooper’s
depictions of Cromwell, and the uncertainty over to
whom the Protector uttered his famous ‘warts and all’
dictum – was it Lely or Cooper? For that reason, the
catalogue entry for the Buccleuch miniature is here
combined not only with Lely’s portrait, but also with
Cooper’s later, larger portrayal of Cromwell, on loan
from Compton Verney (cat. 23).
The Buccleuch miniature is Cooper’s masterpiece.
As is so often the case with Cooper, size appears to
be irrelevant, for as its continual reproduction on
book covers, posters and television demonstrates,
this pre-eminent likeness of Cromwell holds an
ability to fascinate on any scale, and in any medium.
Furthermore, the unfinished nature of the portrayal
delivers, in its modern immediacy, a more compelling
and vivid image than almost any other miniature
Cooper painted. As David Piper observed, it leaves us
with a ‘mint impression of the impact of a great man
upon an artist of near-genius’.1
Although lacking a background and costume,
the miniature should not be seen as some kind of
discarded or abandoned work. For his important
sitters, those whom he knew would require multiple
replicas, Cooper’s practice was to keep the initial
ad vivum head for his own use, as a master version
from which further copies could be made. The
c.1660 portrait of Charles II on display here (cat. 44)
demonstrates a similar approach.
As an unfinished work, the miniature presents
us with a good opportunity to observe Cooper’s
technique. As one would expect from such a good
miniaturist, Cooper excelled at details, and here
we are presented with, for example, what must
be the best painted wart in the history of art. The
miniature’s overall impact, however – its ability to
almost literally sparkle – is created by a much more
complex combination of artistic tricks than the precise
depiction of detail. The vellum support, for example,
would have been carefully selected and prepared,
and here, even over 350 years after it was painted, the
faultless surface allows us to see how important it was
for a miniaturist to have the smoothest possible piece
of vellum on which to paint, reminding us of Nicholas
Hilliard’s dictum that it must always be ‘virgine
parchment, such as never bore haire, but young things
found in the dames bellye’.2 The vellum was then
covered with a pale, cream ground layer, with the
drawing of Cromwell’s head, and the rugged colouring
and shadowing of the face, gradually applied in colour
on top with short, stippled brush strokes, leaving the
ground layer to provide the lighter elements of the
flesh tones where possible, such as in the forehead. A
dark but graded background was then added closely
around the head, onto which many lighter coloured
strands of hair were added. The translucency of the
pigments allow multiple colours to blend into one
another, illuminated all the time by the pale ground
layer, and convey not only a perfectly modulated
sense of depth and form in Cromwell’s head, but also
in elements, such as the hair, a tangible realism. The
portrait, even in its unfinished state, has been much
copied (fig. 19).
Cooper’s 1649 miniature of Cromwell (cat. 17), as
we have noted, is a surprisingly private work, notable
for its relative simplicity and lack of many copies or
derivations. The Buccleuch miniature, on the other
hand, is one of the most famous British faces of all
time, and was clearly designed to be repeated. When
translated into its later, more finished replicas, as seen
in the Compton Verney miniature (cat. 23), Cromwell’s
portrait was given a half-length suit of armour, and
placed in front of a deftly lit rocky background. This
larger format suggests that the likeness was always
intended to be used for presentation portraits of
Cromwell, who by this time was safely positioned as
the de facto ruler of Britain.
What, then, were the circumstances which brought
about this more public depiction of Cromwell, and
when was the likeness taken? The most important
scholarship on Cooper’s Cromwell portraits was
published before the rediscovery, in 1983, of Cooper’s
1649 miniature of Cromwell (cat. 17). As a result, the
present miniature has often been dated to earlier in
the 1650s, given that scholars had somehow to fit it
in with the larger, finished versions of the miniature
(the earliest of which is dated 1656) and the known
documentary evidence that Cooper was working
for ‘Lord General Cromwell and his family’ from
November 1650.3 Now that we know how the same
artist saw Cromwell in 1649, however, it seems safe to
accept that at least several years passed between the
first likeness and the second.
Central to dating Cooper’s famous portrait of
Cromwell is Lely’s identical but larger likeness, which
71
is first recorded in October 1654. At some point
in late 1654 Richard Bradshaw, the Protectorate’s
representative in Hamburg, requested from his agent
in London, James Waynwright, a portrait of Cromwell.
On 6th October, Waynwright responded:
‘The picture you writ for [I] have bespoken one
of Mr. Lilly the best artist in England, who hath
undertaken to do it rarely.’ On the 13th October,
Waynwright adds more detail: ‘I have bought you a
curious picture, exactly done by Mr. Lilley, who drew
it for his Highness, and hath since drawn it for the
Portuguese and Dutch Ambassadors; it cost me 12L.
present money; I could [have] had it cheaper, but not
so good.’ There is no further mention of the picture
in Waynwright’s letters to Bradshaw, who remained
on the continent until 1659, so the portrait must
have been intended for use by Bradshaw, a fervent
republican, as part of his duties in Hamburg. None of
the surviving versions of Lely’s portrait of Cromwell,
of which cat. 22 on loan from Birmingham Museum
is by far the best example, are dated. The reference
Waynwright makes to a possible cheaper version may
well relate to Lely offering the option of some sort
of studio copy, which would account for the many
versions of the portrait which are Lely-esque but not
entirely by the hand of Lely himself.4 The £12 would
indeed seem to suggest that the picture was all by
Lely, however, for at the outset of the 1650s Lely was
charging £5 for a head and shoulders portrait, and £10
for a three-quarter length.
The relevance of Lely’s portrait of Cromwell to the
dating of Cooper’s relates of course to the fact that they
both show exactly the same likeness. One is evidently
a copy of the other, following such details as the fall
of Cromwell’s hair and the furrows in his forehead.
The question is, though, which came first? The earliest
published evidence that Lely was copying Cooper’s
portrait comes only from a print published in about the
1730s by Joseph Sympson, which is inscribed ‘Painted
by Sr. P Lily after ye Original Limning of Cooper’ (fig.
20). On the other hand, two important documentary
sources suggest that it was Lely who enjoyed life
sittings with Cromwell. The first is Waynwright’s letter
cited above, while the second is the much more famous
tale told by the art historian George Vertue, who in
c.1720 wrote:
Mr Peter Lilly did certainly paint the picture of
Oliver Cromwell. for when he sate to him. Oliver
said to him Mr. Lilly I desire you woud use all your
skill to paint my picture truly like me. & not Flatter
me at all. but (pointing to his own face) remark all
72
these ruffness. pimples warts & every thing as see
me. otherwise I never will pay a farthing for it. this
the late Duke of Buckingham told.
Capt.Wind5
But is the Vertue statement as conclusive as first
appears? We should note that Vertue makes it clear
he is recording information given to him, and not
presenting it as a fact. In this case, the information
comes first from the Duke of Buckingham via a
‘Capt. Wind’, that is, the architect Captain William
Wynne, who Vertue records as the source of several art
historical anecdotes. Furthermore, the phrasing ‘Peter
Lilly did certainly paint the picture’ suggests that
the matter was subject to debate. Vertue’s apparent
uncertainty in recording the tale is doubtless due to it
running at odds to his earlier note of 1714, when he
records the provenance of Cooper’s unfinished head
now in the Buccleuch collection:
The picture of Oliver Cromwell a limning by
Samuel Cooper the head only finish’t suppos’d to be
the best of him it being the very picture Oliver Sate
for, the others as Mr.Grahams was & others copy’d
from this and touch’t up by the life. This picture
Cooper kept for himself till Oliver died when his
son Richard Protector heard of it Sent a Gentleman
for it with twenty pounds to pay for it (that being
Mr. Coopers price.6 But Cooper knowing its super
excellent to the rest & what he coud make by
coppies, would not part with it under a hundred
pounds which the Protector was Obliged to give
him; he gave it to his Sister the Lady. Fauconbridge
& before she died made a Present of it to Sr
Thomas Franklin in whose possesion it now is.7
If some of the documentary evidence seems at first
to suggest that Lely secured sittings from Cromwell,
the artistic evidence is far more convincing in Cooper’s
favour. It cannot be often in the history of art that
the portrayal of a wart takes on such significance, but
here it does, for it is the depiction of the famous wart
above Cromwell’s eyebrow, amongst other details,
which allows us to travel artistically from Cooper’s
head to Lely’s, but not vice versa. It is inconceivable
that Cooper could have painted the animated face we
see in the Buccleuch miniature from Lely’s painting,
not least because the wart on Cooper’s portrait is far
more vividly rendered than that seen in Lely’s, where
it appears as more of a blemish, or a mole. Cooper’s
wart is disturbingly realistic – it is pale and flaky, and
deliberately cast with a shadow to make it stand out.
It is an ad vivum wart. Its veracity and uniqueness not
only in Cooper’s oeuvre but probably in the whole
(Fig. 19) After Cooper, Portrait of Oliver Cromwell.
(Fig. 20) Joseph Sympson, after Cooper, Portrait of Oliver Cromwell.
The inscription on this 1730s print is the earliest published
statement that Lely’s portrait of Cromwell was a copy of Cooper’s.
73
(Fig. 21) Robert Walker, Portrait of Oliver Cromwell.
Cooper’s portrait of the new Protector was probably
intended to replace Walker’s much reproduced portrait
of Cromwell, which had been in circulation since
about 1649.
of British portraiture is enough to make us believe
that Cromwell really did issue the instruction that
Vertue relates, and which is commonly paraphrased
as ‘warts and all’. In any case, Lely’s portraits from
life are invariably far more accomplished, and better
observed than the somewhat bland head we see in
the Birmingham picture, with its muted handling.
Is it also possible that Cromwell’s famous command
to paint his pimples and warts is not only a reaction
against the endlessly flattering portraits of Charles I,
but also a comment on Cooper’s earlier 1649 miniature
of Cromwell, in which no wart is visible? Was the
Protector concerned that Cooper’s first likeness had
been too flattering? If so, then perhaps nothing else
we know about Cromwell provides a better insight
into his personality, and consequently the Buccleuch
miniature, for all its simplicity, is in fact one of the
powerful portraits ever made in Britain. The contrast
between Cromwell’s reluctance to sit for his portrait,
and Charles I’s obsession with sitting for his, is of
course a telling one.
If we accept that Lely’s portrayal of Cromwell is
taken from Cooper’s, then we must date the Buccleuch
miniature to before October 1654, when Waynwright
discusses Bradshaw’s portrait for Hamburg. Given
74
that the likeness was by then already a well-known
enough image to have been sent to Portugal and
Holland on diplomatic business, we can assume that
it was in circulation for some time before October. A
good-quality print by John Faber of 1750 (fig. 22), of
what must be Lely’s undated picture on loan here from
Birmingham, records that the original was painted in
1653. Cromwell assumed the title of Protector on 16th
December 1653, and it seems reasonable to assume
that the sitting to Cooper came at some time around
that date, when it was realised that a new public image
of Cromwell was required, perhaps primarily to be sent
abroad. That Cooper was chosen for this important
commission, and not Robert Walker, whose 1649
portrait of Cromwell was by then in wide circulation
(fig. 21), is doubtless a reflection on how highly
valued the miniaturist was by this time. Waynwright’s
evidence that Lely’s portraits were made ‘for His
Highness’ can still stand, for it is possible that Lely
was indeed instructed by Cromwell, or his council, to
produce large-scale portraits of the new Protector, only
that they be based on the sitting given to Cooper. Both
artists would have known each other well; they were
neighbours in Covent Garden, and at some point Lely
sat to Cooper for his portrait (seven times according
(Fig. 22) John Faber, after Lely, Portrait of
Oliver Cromwell.
to Vertue).8
The later, finished, versions of Cooper’s portrait
of Cromwell give us an indication of how the
miniatures were intended to be used. A recent survey
of Cromwell’s iconography describes the ‘many
repetitions and variations made by Cooper based on
the Buccleuch image’,9 but there are in fact only two
which can now be certainly attributed to Cooper.
A version dated 1656 now belongs to the National
Portrait Gallery (fig. 23), having been transferred
from the British Museum in 1939, while another
larger version, dated 1657, is on display here (cat.
23), on loan from Compton Verney (formerly in the
collection of the Viscounts Harcourt).10 Given that
Vertue records only two other Coopers of Cromwell
in addition to the Buccleuch miniature, one of which
is the profile also on display here (cat. 24), and the
fact that there are very few references in later sales to
portraits of Cromwell by Cooper,11 it is far from certain
that there were ever the many others people assume.12
Unfortunately, no certain pre-20th century
provenance for either the NPG or Compton Verney
miniatures is known. However, the 1656 miniature may
well relate to a diplomatic gift for one of the Swedish
ambassadors in London (Sweden was then a key ally
(Fig. 23) Samuel Cooper, Portrait of Oliver Cromwell. Painted
in 1656, this version of Cooper’s c.1653 portrait may have been
intended as a gift for the Swedish Ambassador, Peter Julius Coyet.
of the Commonwealth’s) which was to include the
Protector’s portrait by Cooper. On 7th August 1656,
the Council agreed the following:
The Committee on the quality13 of the present
to the ambassador from Sweden to send for Mr.
Cooper, and direct him according to the present
debate, and send for the person now mentioned
who has a case for enclosing a picture, and treat
with him for it, if they judge it fit, or cause
another to be provided.14
The ‘person now mentioned’ providing the case for
the portrait was evidently George Alkinton, who on
22nd July 1657 was paid £410 4s 6d for:
a chain of gold, and a jewel with his Highness’
portrait, for M. Coyet,15 late agent for the King
of Sweden.16
The sum paid was a large one, and we can gain some
idea of just what such a bejewelled portrait might have
looked like in a detailed bill submitted to the Council
by George Alkinton in 1657, this time for a gift to
Robert Blake (for his decisive naval victory over the
Spanish at the Battle of Santa Cruz in April 1657),
which was also to include a portrait of Cromwell:
75
A Bill for the Jewell made for Generll Blake; ordr 13 Oct. 1657
June 4t, 1657 – Ordered by his Highness ye Lord Protector, That Georg
Alkinton doe make a Jewell to be presented to Generall Blake.
A true and just Accompt of the prizes of the severall
Diamonds conteyn’d in the said Jewell as they cost ye said Geo. Alkinton,
Li s d
Imprs, 4 ffaucet Diamonds at 36li apeece … 144 00 00
It. 2 ffaucet Diamonds at 28li apeece
… 56 00 00
It. 2 ffaucet Diamonds at 20li apeece
… 40 00 00
It. 3 ffaucet Diamds on ye upper part of ye Jewell
… 28 00 00
It. 3 ffaucet Diamds at ye bottome of ye Jewell … 16 10 00
It. 4 Thicke Diamonds at 25 li apeece … 100 00 00
It. 4 Thicke Diamonds at 23 li apeece
… 92 00 00
It.20 Thicke Diamonds at 17li apeece … 17 00 00
It. 4 Small thicke Diamonds at … 1 10 00
495 00 00
It. for ye Gold, Cristall-Case & ffashion of ye Jewell
It. for yor Highness’ Portraiture
… 50 00 00
… 20 00 00
I humbly referr my selfe to yor Highness for my care & paines in buying
the Diamonds.17
This total bill of £575 was approved promptly – with
‘His Highness present – (Approved in person)’, the
accounts tell us – on the same day it was presented,
Tuesday 13th October 1657. The bill was presented
to the Navy to pay, and George Alkinton was in the
end given £10 for his ‘care & paines in buying the
Diamonds’.18
It seems safe to assume that, as with the jewelled
case for ambassador Coyet which Alkinton also
worked on, the miniature portrait encased in
diamonds, gold and crystal for Blake was also by
Cooper. £20 is, as we have seen, the sum mentioned
by Vertue as being Cooper’s ‘price’ for a portrait
of Cromwell, when relating the attempt of Richard
Cromwell to buy his father’s portrait from the artist
in c.1658. It also seems reasonable to suggest that the
miniature on loan here from Compton Verney, dated
1657, may have been the miniature given to Blake. The
1657 miniature is slightly larger than the 1656 example
in the National Portrait Gallery, which may account for
76
the larger and more expensive setting for Blake’s gift
compared with Coyet’s.
Perhaps the most interesting thing to note about
the Blake gift is the interest Cromwell himself took
in the matter, and, we can assume, doubtless the
portrait by Cooper. If so, then it is interesting to note
that the 1657 miniature, like the 1656 example before
it, is noticeably less unflattering to Cromwell than
the Buccleuch ad vivum study. In both, for example,
the famous wart has become more of a blemish, and
Cromwell’s features have been gently classicised and
refined. Was there a temptation to think that for
these gifts, meant for prominent public display by
foreign ambassadors and celebrated generals, the
brutal honesty of the Buccleuch miniature was too
much for a contemporary audience, one used to the
accepted flatteries of portraitists the world over, to
acknowledge?
bg
1 David Piper, ‘The Face of Oliver Cromwell’, in The Listener, 11th September
1958, p. 377. The present writer would unhesitatingly strike the word ‘near’
from Piper’s observation. Graham Reynolds goes further, and calls the
miniature ‘the meeting of two of the greatest geniuses of the 17th Century’.
2 Daphne Foskett, Samuel Cooper (1609–1672) (London, 1974), p. 133.
See cat. 17. The 2004 Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, for example,
uses the Buccleuch miniature as its illustration for Cromwell, but dates it to
c.1650, as does the most recent survey of Cromwell’s iconography, John
Cooper’s Oliver the First (London, 1999), p.29.
3 Richard Bradshaw (1610–85), the diplomatist, not his kinsman the Regicide
John Bradshaw, as stated in Oliver Millar, Sir Peter Lely 1618–1680, exh. cat.,
National Portrait Gallery (London, 1979), p.46, and not, as also stated therein,
to Copenhagen.
4 For example, the version in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, and the version
in Williamsburg.
5 ‘Vertue Note Books Volume 1’, The Walpole Society, vol.18, 1929–30 (Oxford,
1930), p. 91.
6 Evidently, Cooper’s price for a standard portrait head at that time.
7 ‘Vertue Note Books Volume 1’, The Walpole Society, vol. 18, 1929–30 (Oxford,
1930), p. 31.
1930), p.7.
9 John Cooper, Oliver the First (London, 1999), p.29, p.31
10 Unfortunately, it is not known when the miniature entered the Harcourt
collection, and no certain earlier provenance is known for this miniature,
which was on loan to the Museum of London between 1937–2006. It may
have been acquired overseas, for a Cooper on vellum of this size of Cromwell
in armour was sold in Zurich at Fischer, 2nd May 1934, lot 597. The miniature
was first published in 1935, in Karl Pearson & Geoffrey M. Morant, The
Portraiture of Oliver Cromwell, with special reference to the Wilkinson Head, p.
83, pl. XLV, as in the Harcourt collection.
11 There is, for example, no Cromwell among the many Coopers in the sale
of Michael Rosse 1723. Daphne Foskett, Samuel Cooper (1609–1672),
(London, 1974), p.42 reproduces this request from Sir George Downing,
dated 4th July 1658, ‘The French ambassador hath earnestly desired of me
a picture of his highness. If you had one from Cooper for Bevering [a Dutch
diplomat], another also might be had for him. Truly it’s worth the cost, which
is little.’ There is no record in the State Papers, however, of miniatures being
supplied for the Dutch and French ambassadors.
12 The index of Vertue’s notebooks suggests that a whole-length Cooper of
Cromwell was given to the Queen of Sweden. This is, however, a reference to a
portrait by Robert Walker sent to Stockholm.
13 A Council instruction of 1st August tells us that the committee comprised
‘[Gilbert] Pickering, the Lord-Deputy, [William] Sydenham, [John] Lisle, and
[Walter] Strickland [who were] to consider its quality and direct its
preparation.’ It is tempting to imagine this is the first record of official artistic
criticism in the British government.
14 Item no. 33 of the day’s proceedings. Mary Anne Everett Green ed., Calendar
of State Papers Domestic: Interregnum, 1656–7 (London, 1883), p. 66.
15 Ibid, p.589. Peter Julius Coyet (1618–67), Swedish ambassador in London
between 1655–6.
16 Mary Anne Everett Green (ed.), Calendar of State Papers Domestic:
Interregnum, 1656–7 (London, 1883), p. 589. The transcription in the printed
volume gives an erroneous date of 1655 for this payment. Some authors have
assumed that the portrait mentioned here, and for which Alkinton made his
chain and case, was a medal, perhaps by Thomas Simon. However, the Council
accounts and warrants are always clear that a medal was described as such, ‘a
Gold Meddall’, and these seem only to have been attached to a gold chain.
They were also much cheaper than the jewel encased portraits discussed here.
For details on the medals, see Marvin Lessen, ‘The Cromwell Lord Protector
medal by Simon’, in the British Numismatic Journal, vol. 47, 1977, pp. 114–26.
17 This bill is referred to in the Calendar of State Papers, but not given in full.
The detailed transcription is found in Notes & Queries, 5th Series, vol. 6,
July–December 1876, (December 2nd) p.444, helpfully annotated by Henry
W. Henfrey.
18 It is worth noting the comparative cost of the crystal, frames and cases that
Cooper supplied himself. In 1668 Cooper charged Samuel Pepys £30 for his
wife’s portrait, with an additional £8.3s.4d for the glazed frame and case.
77
Cat. 24
(Fig. 24) After Cooper, Profile
Portrait of Oliver Cromwell.
Not actual size
Samuel Cooper
Profile Portrait of Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658), c.1653
Watercolour on vellum, set down on pasteboard
Provenance
John Lumsden Propert (1834–1902); Sir Stafford
Northcote, 1st Earl of Iddesleigh (1818–87);1
Collection of the late Lady Northcote, Sotheby’s,
London, 19th July 1934, lot 84; Thence by descent;
Acquired by Philip Mould & Co. 2010; Private
Collection, UK.
The recent rediscovery of this rare profile portrait of
Cromwell2 suggests that Cooper gained access for a
further sitting with the Protector. The more restrained
and functional nature of this miniature suggests that it
was not intended as a presentational image in its own
right, nor indeed as a family piece. Profile portrait
miniatures were extremely unusual in the 17th century
78
and, almost without exception were produced for
other purposes such as coins and medals. The Royal
Collection also holds a profile drawing of Charles II
by Cooper, which Katharine Gibson has reasoned
was produced for Thomas Simon in order to replace,
with great haste, the Commonwealth currency after
the Restoration.3 The present miniature, therefore,
may have been conceived as a preparatory work for
the coinage, or the numerous medals which required
Cromwell’s image in profile such as those by Thomas
Simon (1618–1665), although it is hard to say with
certainty which medal or coin it formed the basis for.
The miniature relates to two other versions
associated with Cooper. The first is an unfinished
profile in the National Portrait Gallery. For a long time
this was (correctly, in the opinion of the present writer)
attributed to Susannah-Penelope Rosse (c.1655–1700),
the skilled daughter of the miniaturist Richard Gibson,
who regularly made high-quality copies of Cooper’s
work. However, the NPG version is now catalogued
as ‘attributed to Cooper’. The second repetition of the
profile likeness is the larger, monochrome sketch in the
Devonshire Collection at Chatsworth, which has long
been catalogued as by Cooper (fig. 24). However, this
example has now been reassessed as an 18th century
copy after Cooper, not only because of its inferior
quality but also because the dimensions and medium
are unlike those used by Cooper, and indeed any major
miniaturist working in the 17th century.
The Chatsworth example may, however, have an
important bearing on the provenance of the present
miniature. It was first recorded by the antiquarian
George Vertue (1684–1756). In his notebooks, Vertue
records handling:
a small head a limning by Cooper. a profil of Oliver
Cromwell. finely done only the head finish about
this bigness belonging to the Duke of Devonshire
boorow’d to Coppy by Mr. Richter who has done it
very justly for Mr Howard in whose hands I see it.4
Intriguingly, Vertue’s recorded observations about
the profile do not seem to match the portrait now at
Chatsworth. Firstly, Vertue describes the profile as
a ‘limning’, whereas in fact the Chatsworth profile is
painted on card, not vellum, and is a plain black and
white sketch, not a finished ‘limning’ or miniature. He
also describes it as ‘finely done’, which would suggest
a more subtle, finished miniature than the loose sketch
at Chatsworth today. Finally, Vertue recorded the size
of the miniature in the form of a quick sketch in the
margins of his notebook, and that sketch does not
match the Chatsworth profile, which shows Cromwell
in armour and is much larger, at 79 mm (3 1/8 in.) high.
1 See John Lumsden Propert, Catalogue of the Miniatures of the Hon. Sir H.
Stafford Northcote, BT., C.B., illus. pl. 21.
2 Last published in J.J. Foster, Samuel Cooper and the English Miniature Painters
of the XVIIth Century, 2 vols., (London, 1914–16), vol. 1, illus. pl. 29, fig. 68.
3 Katharine Gibson, Samuel Cooper’s Profiles of King Charles II and Thomas
However, while Vertue’s sketch does not match
the NPG version, it is almost identical to the present
miniature (35mm/1 3/8 in. high). It is not inconceivable
therefore, that having borrowed the original profile
by Cooper to copy, Christian Richter somehow
failed to return the correct miniature to Chatsworth.
Furthermore, Vertue also concluded that the miniature
was ‘in all probability … done for the coins. towards
the latter end of his [Cromwell’s] days. & from this
very picture Simons [Thomas Simon] made his dyes-of
the crown &c.’
Unlike both the Chatsworth or NPG variants, the
present miniature has always been given to Cooper
himself. It certainly displays many of the artist’s unique
characteristics, including the unblended red-brown
paint used to describe the contours of the face and
the lack of stipple so prevalent in the work of his
contemporary limners. The profile is delicate, as
though it has been taken as an ad vivum sketch, not
yet worked up into a detailed miniature. As another ad
vivum portrait of Cromwell, it is an important addition
to an even smaller group. Moving seamlessly from
Cromwell, the puritanical regicide, to the indulgent
pomp of the new king, Cooper justified his status as
an internationally renowned miniaturist. In his profile
sketches, he treated his diametrically opposed subjects
with the same penetrating scrutiny, stripping both
of their worldly accoutrements to give the viewer an
insight into the ‘true man’, qualities which, through
the skill of Thomas Simon, were then successfully
reproduced in images seen more widely throughout
the country. Cooper’s profile likeness was later a
popular engraving, as demonstrated by Houbraken’s
c.1745 print for George Knapton’s series of ‘Heads of
Illustrious Persons of Great Britain’.
Until recently, the miniature was last recorded in
the 1930s, and was thought to have been lost when
it was sold from the Northcote collection in 1934.
Prior to that it had been in the collection of John
Lumsden Propert, whose passion for miniatures led
him to acquire probably the most significant private
collection of miniatures in the 19th century outside the
Royal Collection, and whose History of Miniature Art
(1887) was the first scholarly treatment of the subject
published in England.
bg
Simon’s Coins and Medals, Master Drawings, vol. 30, no. 3 (autumn 1992),
pp. 314–19.
1930s), p. 45.
79
Cat. 25
Plaster Cast of Death-mask of Oliver Cromwell, probably 19th century
Plaster
205 x 140mm (8 x 5 1/2 in.)
Lent by Warwick Castle
When Oliver Cromwell died at Whitehall on
3rd September 1658, his body was dissected and
embalmed according to ancient royal ritual. The
medallist Thomas Simon (c.1623–51) then modelled
the corpse’s features in wax for an effigy to be
displayed on the Lord Protector’s coffin during a
lengthy lying in state at Somerset House. The effigy
was focus of attention during the elaborate funeral
procession to Westminster Abbey which followed on
23rd November although, as was customary, the body
itself was quietly interred in the Abbey beforehand.
At the Restoration, the effigy was unceremoniously
hanged and burned in Whitehall.
Simon may have based his wax portrait on this death
mask of the Protector, later casts of which are now
in several collections. As it is known that Cromwell’s
corpse underwent the grisly autopsy (on suspicion that
the Protector had been poisoned) and then the lengthy
process of embalmment in the hours immediately
following death, the mask must have been taken some
time later but probably before the body was conveyed
80
to Somerset House on 20th September. Pads are clearly
visible beneath the eyelids to prop up the already
sunken eyes but the mask has also been improved by a
re-modeller. Neither the bandages covering the saw cut
where the skull cap had been removed then roughly
sutured back during autopsy, nor those supporting the
sagging chin, a common feature of death masks, are
apparent. In addition for its possible use by Thomas
Simon, this sanitised image of the Protector reposing
in death may have been designed for distribution as
a memento mori within a close circle of friends and
family.
It was later widely reproduced to satisfy growing
demand for souvenirs and artefacts relating to
Cromwell, particularly in the 19th century when the
flourishing market for death masks of famous people
was catered for by several cast makers in London
and Paris. Difficult to date – this example has been
at Warwick Castle since at least 1868 – the surviving
casts show variations, with some displaying moulding
seam lines or even lacking Cromwell’s trademark mole.
From this exhibition’s point of view, the mask’s chief
interest must be the wart, the prominence of which
indicates how it impossible it would have been for
Cooper to ignore it.
md
81
Cat. 26
Christian Richter (1678–1732)
Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of England (1599–1658), 1708
Oval, 102 x 85 mm (4 x 3 1/3 in.)
Signed ‘C Richter’ on the reverse in pencil, the ‘C’ and
‘R’ in monogram, dated ‘1708’
Unrecorded until 2011, the present portrait is one
of five known examples of Richter’s miniature of
Cromwell copied from the ‘Harcourt’ miniature by
Samuel Cooper of 1657 (now Compton Verney, cat.
23). The four other miniatures from this series are in
82
the Royal Collection, Chatsworth House, the Wallace
Collection and one was sold at Sotheby’s, 26th April
1971. Four of the five are identically signed and dated
1708, and it is possible that Richter painted them
speculatively because 1708 was the 50th anniversary
of Cromwell’s death. The version in the Wallace
Collection is inscribed in pencil on the reverse ‘Sum
possessor’ alongside Richter’s signature and the date
‘1708’, showing that Richter in fact owned the original
Cooper miniature.
rc
83
Cat. 27
Samuel Cooper
Portrait of a Lady Wearing a Double Sable Fur Tippet with Jewelled Clasp, 1653
Signed lower left with initials and dated ‘SC/ 1653’
Provenance
Mrs Christine Joan Villiers; Acquired by Philip Mould
& Company in 2012; UK Private Collection.
This newly discovered signed and dated portrait by
Cooper, painted in 1653, first surfaced at a minor
UK auction in 2012, where it was catalogued as a
work by an unknown artist, and estimated at just a
few hundred pounds. The mistake was an easy one to
84
make, however; the glass covering had become pitted
from ‘glass disease’, so that at first glance the miniature
looked as if it was in poor condition, and the signature
was entirely obscured. Also visible was an exquisitely
painted fur wrap around the sitter’s body – something
unique in Cooper’s oeuvre. On the front of the dress,
the head and body of an animal can be clearly seen,
while another head is just visible over the shoulder,
attached to the jewelled clasp.
A secure identification of the animal has so far
eluded us, but it is thought to be a sable (an animal
which may have been intended to convey some sort
of link to the artist, given his use of sable brushes).
A jewelled sable fur would have been an expensive
item, and indeed in the previous century was only
allowed (under sumptuary laws) to be worn by royalty
and nobles above a certain rank. Although worn furs
may have been going out of fashion by the mid-17th
century, the time and skill required to paint the sable
here with such fidelity strongly suggests that the
commission must have been one of Cooper’s more
expensive, and that the sitter was perhaps a significant
figure in Commonwealth society. Sadly, the sitter
remains unknown, but the fact that Oliver Cromwell’s
father-in-law, Sir James Bourchier, was a furrier may
allow speculation that the sitter could be one of his
younger daughters.
bg
85
Cat. 28
Not actual size
(Fig. 25) Studio of Adriaen Hanneman, Portrait of Charles II.
Hanneman’s original portrait, now lost, was frequently copied in
miniature whilst the king was in exile.
Nathaniel Thach (1617–after 1652), after Adriaen Hanneman (1601–71)
Portrait of King Charles II (1630–85), c.1650
Provenance
Greville Gore Langton Esq.; On Loan to the Victoria
& Albert Museum from 1967 until sold to a private
collection.
This portrait of Charles II in exile is based upon
Adriaen Hanneman’s lost portrait of c.1648, painted
when the court had settled at The Hague (fig. 25 shows
a studio replica). It, and the Des Granges miniature
of James II when Duke of York (cat. 29), show how
the exiled royal family had to depend on the work of
miniaturists who, while competent, had generally to
copy the work of other artists, and
unlike Cooper were not able to create new,
captivating likenesses.
86
Nevertheless, judging by the present miniature and
another signed version dated ‘165–’ (Mauritshuis,
The Hague), Thach was one of Cooper’s most skilful
contemporaries, and it is regrettable that so few of his
works are extant. It seems Thach left England for the
continent in the early 1640s, for in c.1643 his uncle
John Cradock, an amateur artist and father of the artist
Mary Beale, made a will in which he left Nathaniel his
prepared cards ‘empastered rounds as wee call them’,
and where Nathaniel is described as being ‘Nathaniell
Thach late of London Picture Drawer’. It is probable
that he was living in The Hague, and perhaps from
c.1646 working for the exiled Queen Elizabeth of
Bohemia, as most of his other known surviving works
are of sitters from her family and circle. There is a
possibility that he may have been working as a pupil
of, or in some kind of collaboration with, Alexander
Cooper who also worked in The Hague at that time
for Elizabeth. Thach must have still been living in The
Hague after 1648 when Charles, then still Prince of
Wales arrived there. Hanneman’s portrait of Charles
was copied much more prolifically by Des Granges
(with whose work Thach’s has been confused), and was
widely circulated in miniature to Charles’s supporters
during the Interregnum. In a later petition to the then
restored king, Des Granges sought payment for some
thirteen versions made in 1651 alone, when Charles
was briefly in Scotland.1 In overall appearance the
miniatures of Charles by both artists are so close, it is
possible that they had some close association during
this period.
The survival of the exquisite original enamelled gold
locket set with diamonds shows that this was probably
a lavish presentation piece. The depiction of a boat
on the interior of the locket is doubtless intended to
allude to Charles’s flight from England, or perhaps his
inevitable return.
rc
1 R.W. Goulding, ‘The Welbeck Abbey Miniatures belonging to His Grace the
Duke of Portland’, in The Walpole Society, vol. 4, 1914–15 (Oxford, 1916),
p. 29.
87
Cat. 29
(Fig. 26) Cat. 29, verso.
David des Granges (c.1611–after 1672)
Portrait of James II as Duke of York (1633–1701), late 1640s early 1650s
Provenance
The Collection of Edward Grosvenor Paine, Christie’s,
23rd October 1979, lot 29.
David des Granges was an almost exact contemporary
of Samuel Cooper; his baptism is recorded a few years
after Cooper’s assumed birth date of c.1608. Mary
Edmond discovered a family relationship between the
two artists, as in January 1635/6 David des Granges
married a Judith Hoskins. It has not been possible
to discover the exact connection between the two
families at this point but the mention of three of the
‘Desgranges’ family in Cooper’s will suggests that they
were more than just fellow limners.1 The two artists
also lived in close proximity – des Granges in Elm
88
Street, close to Long Acre, where John Hoskins the
younger was later to reside.
Des Granges was a staunch Royalist, possibly due to
his family’s close working association with the crown.
One aunt was Queen Anne’s silkwoman, and a witness
at his baptism was David Drummond.2 At his brother
Francis’s christening a witness was named as the
Scotsman George Heriot, the king’s jeweller.
Unlike Cooper, his work can be traced back to
when he was still in his teens, when stylistically des
Granges followed the path of the elder Hoskins and
Peter Oliver.3 Much of his oeuvre is made up of copies
after oil paintings and this made him something of a
chameleon, able to produce convincing miniaturised
Van Dycks as well as successfully emulating Hoskins’
softer hatching.4 When compared to Cooper, his work
sometimes suffers from a flat uniformity, perhaps due
to the constraints placed upon him as a producer
of repetitive portraits for distribution among royal
supporters. His appointment as ‘His Majesty’s Limner
in Scotland’ in 1651 secured this position and steered
his career firmly along this path.
This portrait of James II as a boy cannot date to
earlier than 1647/8, the date of the original painting
by Peter Lely from which the miniature is derived. In
1647 Lely was commissioned to paint a group portrait
of the three younger royal children, who at that time
were in the care of the Duke of Northumberland.5 In
the same or following year Lely painted the double
portrait of Charles I and his second son James, Duke
of York, by then in captivity.6 This portrait of James by
des Granges would appear to be taken from a further
1 Cf. Mary Edmond, ‘Limners and Picturemakers’, in The Walpole Society,
vol. 47 (1978–80), p. 111.
2 Possibly the same David Drummond of Cultmalundie, whose ratification is
recorded in 1681 under Charles II.
3 John Murdoch, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford 2004),
suggests that he may have been trained by Peter Oliver. ‘Des Granges’s earliest
miniatures date from the later 1620s and show a strong consciousness of the
derivation dated 1647, also at Syon House; a simplified
image showing the Duke wearing a lawn collar and
blue garter ribbon.
The unusual inscribed silver frame on the miniature
bears the legend ‘Remember Death’ (fig. 26) and may
have been commissioned after the death of James’s
father, King Charles I, in January 1649.
er
style and technical practice of both Peter Oliver and John Hoskins.’
4 Two portraits signed by des Granges of James 1st Duke of Hamilton and Sir
James Hamilton, 2nd son of the 1st Earl of Haddington (collection of the Earls
of Haddington) show him effectively copying both of these artists.
5 Petworth House.
6 Syon House.
89
Cat. 30
Samuel Cooper
Portrait of an Unknown Lady in an Orange Dress, 1654
Signed in gold with interlaced initials ‘SC’ and dated
‘1654’
Inscribed in ink on the back paper ‘By Cowper / 1654’
Provenance
By descent in the collection of miniatures at Castle
Howard, North Yorkshire.
Lent by the Castle Howard Collection
This is a large and important signed work of 1654,
in which the striking orange and blue colours of the
sitter’s dress have remained particularly vibrant.
Unfortunately, it has not been possible to identify the
90
sitter. She does not appear to represent either of the
two Countesses of Carlisle of this period, and therefore
the miniature probably entered the collection at Castle
Howard through marriage or from another branch of
the family.
From the start of the Protectorate, Cooper was
seemingly overwhelmed by commissions, not least
from Cromwell and his family. Obtaining a sitting with
him was very difficult, and it is likely that this sitter
was either well connected or wealthy. Correspondence
from another of Cooper’s potential clients in 1654,
Dorothy Osborne (1627–95), reveals how patrons
struggled to get a portrait from Cooper. Osborne had
at first thought of asking either Cooper or Hoskins
to copy an existing portrait of her, but for whatever
reason soon rejected that option in favour of a sitting to
91
Cooper, which was hard to achieve; ‘I have made him
twenty courtesys’, she wrote to her future husband,
Sir William Temple, in 1654, ‘and promised him £15
to persuade him’.1 It is not known if Dorothy Osborne
succeeded, but tellingly her approach to Cooper came
only after she had been dissatisfied, twice, with her
portrait by Lely:
I have been thinking of sending you my picture
till I could come myself; but a picture is but dull
company, and that you need not; besides, I cannot
tell whether it be very like me or not, though ‘tis
the best I ever had drawn for me, and Mr. Lilly will
have it that he never took more pains to make a
good one in his life, and that was it I think spoiled
it. He was condemned for making the first he drew
for me a little worse than I, and in making this
better he has made it as unlike as t’other.2
One is here reminded of Samuel Pepys’ famous
criticism of Lely’s portraits; ‘good, but not like’, an
observation we never hear of Cooper’s work.
rc & bg
Cat. 31
Samuel Cooper
A Portrait Miniature of a Gentleman Wearing Gold Studded Armour, early 1650s
Signed with monogram ‘SC’
Provenance
Mrs Marjorie Rees; Sotheby’s, London, 11 November
1954, lot 18; Christies, 25 May 2004, lot 61.
1 Edward Abbott Parry, The Letters from Dorothy Osborne to Sir William
Temple (1652–4), (London, 1914), p. 245.
2 Ibid p. 173.
92
This portrait, probably painted in the early years of
the 1650s, is one of a series of rare smaller images
produced by Cooper.1 Presumably responding to his
clients’ demands for more portable images, the size of
this image suggests it could have been worn discreetly
or secreted away by its owner.2 The miniature is one of
the earliest examples of Cooper’s conjoined signature,
which is generally used after 1653.3
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1 The framing and small size are comparable to a later portrait by Cooper of an
unknown man, dating to c.1660, in the Victoria and Albert Museum [632–
1882] and the same museum’s portrait, possibly Elizabeth, Mrs Claypole
(Evans 9).
2 This is supported by the gold casing, which is probably original with the
miniature. Like many lockets of this period, the lid has been lost.
3 There is a portrait of Grace Pierpont, Lady Manners, Duke of Rutland
Collection signed with Cooper’s monogram and dated 1650.
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Cat. 32
Samuel Cooper
Portrait of Sir Richard Fanshawe, 1st Bt (1608–66), early to mid-1650s
Watercolour on vellum put down on a leaf from
a table-book
Provenance
The Property of Major R. G. Fanshawe, Sotheby’s,
London, 17th December 1973 (bought Daphne
Foskett); The collection of Daphne Foskett; With
David Lavender; The Albion Collection, Bonhams,
London, 22nd April 2004, lot 9.
94
The existence of this miniature was unknown until it
was sold by a member of the Fanshawe family in 1973.
The identity of the sitter is therefore based largely
on family provenance. Portraits of men in armour
are often problematic in terms of dating, as this long
lawn collar and shoulder-length hair can fall to within
a ten-year period between the mid-1640s and mid1650s. Unsigned and undated, the miniature seems
to belong most comfortably to a group of portraits
of the early to mid-1650s, when Cooper was painting
somewhat weary Royalists, still sporting armour from
the previous decade. Certainly this miniature would
have been painted during a relatively stable period in
the lives of the Fanshawes.1 A portrait of Fanshawe
attributed to Peter Lely (Private Collection) shows
the sitter with his son, Richard. In this work, he wears
comparable armour and his hair is similarly curled.2
Fanshawe’s earlier portrait by William Dobson
(London Borough of Barking and Dagenham,
Valence House Museum),3 shows him in the guise
of a man of letters and not the wartime diplomat he
was to become. Cooper’s portrait is more sombre and
austere, with the focus on the face of the sitter, and
perhaps even shows the first signs of the ill health that
dominated the last ten years of his life.
1 Fanshawe and his wife Ann travelled extensively and often precariously
from the earliest years of their marriage. In March 1653 they took up
residence at Tankersley Park, near Sheffield, before moving the following year
to Huntingdonshire. They may have been in London in 1657 as there is a
signed and dated portrait of Lady Ann by John Hoskins (the younger?),
which was sold as part of the collection of Greta Heckett at Sotheby’s,
London, 11th July 1977, lot 157. Always nomadic, the Fanshawe family moved
almost continuously between rented lodgings until the death of Oliver
Cromwell in 1658, when they joined the exiled royal court in Paris. Pepys
tantalisingly notes both Cooper and Fanshawe in the same diary entry of
January 1661/2: ‘I went forth, by appointment, to meet with Mr. Grant, who
promised to bring me acquainted with Cooper, the great limner in little. Sir
Richd. Fanshaw is come suddenly from Portugal, and nobody knows what his
business is about.’
2 A later copy of the boy in this portrait (Valence House Museum) names him as
Richard Fanshawe (1648-–59), tragically the first of three sons to be named
after his father.
3 The portrait of Fanshawe by Dobson has been variously dated to c.1643–5.
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95
Cat. 33
Cat. 34
Samuel Cooper
Portrait of an Unknown Lady, formerly called Mary Fairfax, Duchess of Buckingham, 1655
Samuel Cooper
John Holles, 2nd Earl of Clare (1595–1666), 1656
56 mm (2 1/8 in.) high
Signed ‘SC’ and dated ‘1655’
Provenance
By descent in the Kemeys-Tynte family.
The identification of the sitter is problematic. This fairhaired, sensuous young woman bears no resemblance
1 Cooper’s miniature is illustrated in Stephen Lloyd, Portrait Miniatures from the
Collection of the Duke of Buccleuch, (1996), no. 45.
96
to another likeness by Samuel Cooper, now in the
Buccleuch Collection, described since the 18th
century, when it belonged to Horace Walpole, as Mary
Fairfax, Duchess of Buckingham (1638–1704); that
miniature shows a dark-haired woman of commanding
features, recognisably the same as in other portraits of
the duchess by John Michael Wright and Peter Lely.1
This miniature came from the Kemeys-Tynte family
and may well depict an ancestress whose identity has
been lost over the course of time.
Signed lower right in monogram ‘SC’ and dated ‘1656’
ls
For an aristocrat of significant wealth and standing,
John Holles, 2nd Earl of Clare, played only a minor
part in the turbulent politics of the period. He fought
Provenance
At Welbeck Abbey by 1743, when catalogued by
George Vertue;1 thence by descent.
on the Royalist side at the battle of Newbury in
1643, but did so reluctantly, having on a number of
occasions tried to dissuade Charles I from war. Clare
seems to have cooperated with Parliament thereafter.
In this unusually well-preserved miniature, dated
1656, Cooper has borrowed the pose and depiction
of armour used by Robert Walker in his most widely
reproduced portrait type of Oliver Cromwell (fig.
21, p. 74), which had been in circulation from 1649
onwards. Whether or not this was noticed by Clare
is unknown.
bg
1 R.W. Goulding, ‘The Welbeck Abbey Miniatures belonging to His Grace the
Duke of Portland’, in The Walpole Society, vol. 4, 1914–15 (Oxford, 1916),
no. 58, p. 85.
97
Cat. 35
(Fig. 27) John Hoskins the younger, Self-portrait. Despite being
a self-portrait this falls short of the level of characterisation seen
in Cooper’s work.
As noted in the entry for cat. 9, Hoskins the elder
and younger were both considered masters of their
art form, a view echoed by William Sanderson, ‘For
Miniature or Limming, in watercolours, Hoskins and
his son (if my judgement faile not) incomparable.’1
That the younger Hoskins was a member of an
intellectual elite is borne out in his connection with
Robert Hooke (if he is indeed the ‘Hoskins’ who visits
Hooke at Freshwater in the late 1640s – see cat. 67)
as well as a mention in Pepys’s diary in 1668 as ‘Mr
Cooper’s cousin Jacke’, present at Pepys’s midsummer
dinner party, distinguished as one of a group ‘all
eminent men in their way’.2
As John Murdoch has stated, few works, if any,
are extant by either Hoskins after 1658. The will of
the elder Hoskins confirms that he died in straitened
circumstances, still waiting for a pension from the
king, which would never now be paid.3 Could the close
kinship between Cooper and his younger cousin, born
out by the existence of informal drawings of each other
and the prominence of Hoskins in Christiana Cooper’s
will suggest that he became a member of Cooper’s
studio?4 After Cooper’s death, as late as 1695, he
was still advertising for work even though he may
have been in his 60s or even 70s by this date. Cooper
certainly worked until he was around 60 years old but
Hoskins’ sale of items of sentimental value in 1703,
presumably close to his own demise, suggests financial
desperation in the absence of familial provision.5
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John Hoskins the younger (1620s–after 1703), in the studio of John Hoskins the elder (c.1590–
1664/5)
Portrait of an Unknown Gentleman, 1654
Signed with initials and dated, ‘IH/ 1654’
Provenance
The property of a Lady, Christie’s, London, 12th June
2006, lot 50; The Arturi Phillips Collection.
Lent by the Arturi Phillips Collection
This portrait and the following two entries (cats. 36
& 37) show two examples of the work of Cooper’s
competitors in the 1650s. Fine works that they are,
they nonetheless demonstrate just how far apart
Cooper stood from his contemporaries. Although
signed ‘IH’, in the manner of John Hoskins the elder,
this miniature was probably painted by John Hoskins
the younger (whose self-portrait is in the Buccleuch
collection, fig 27) while working in his father’s studio.
As a young man of between 24 and 34, he may have
98
completed an apprenticeship of over ten years by this
date before gaining employment in his father’s studio
as assistant.
The portrait is typical of the work emerging from
the Hoskins studio of this date and shows a clear
empathy between sitter and artist. The naturalistic
features against a carefully detailed costume, with the
addition of a landscape background, are a hallmark of
the studio works from the 1630s onwards.
It is possible that Hoskins the younger was able to
sustain commissions in his father’s studio during the
Interregnum, building up his own patronage as his
father’s influence declined. His career had certainly
been less politically defined than his father’s. This may
have had little relevance to patrons but Hoskins the
elder was a paid court painter, working for the royal
family, prior to the Civil War. The variety in his sitters
is an indication that commissions were eagerly sought
by Parliamentarians as well as Royalists from the wellestablished Hoskins studio.
1 William Sanderson, Graphice, (London, 1658), p. 20.
2 The Diary of Samuel Pepys, 19th July 1668, (Diary of Samuel Pepys, 1668,
Transcribed From The Shorthand Manuscript In The Pepysian Library
Magdalene College Cambridge By The Rev. Mynors Bright, 1893).
3 The will of John Hoskins the elder bequeaths only £20 to his son for a ring or
to spend how he wished and the arrears of his pension, which had been
granted in 1640 by Charles I but which were never to be paid by Charles II.
4 A group of drawings by Samuel Cooper, likely to have descended through the
Hoskins family, are in a private collection and show Hoskins the younger as
well as other family members. Hoskins the younger is probably the author of
a pastel portrait of his cousin, Samuel Cooper, now in the Victoria and Albert
Museum (cat. 67).
5 Daily Courant, 4th March,1703; ‘Sale of limnings, paintings and “boxes of
limning colours” of John Hoskins, at Alders Coffee House in Maiden Lane,
Covent Garden, 6 March 1703’; in The Art World in Britain 1660–1735,
available online at http://artworld.york.ac.uk.
99
Cat. 36
Matthew Snelling (1621–78)
Portrait of an Unknown Lady, 1650s
Provenance
E.J. Clark Collection; Sotheby’s, London, 26th
November 1973, lot 100.
The connection between Cooper and Snelling goes
back to 1644, when Cooper painted the young man in,
according to George Vertue’, ‘chiaro[scuro] … about
8 inches by 6. finely drawn’. This is now lost, though
according to Vertue, ‘the hands & drapery [were]
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meanly done.’1 Described by Horace Walpole as a
‘gentleman’, he appears to have been part way between
a professional artist and learned amateur. There is
no indication of an apprenticeship, either through
documentary evidence or technique and he may have
been self-taught. He may have also earned a living as
an artist’s supplier, as there is a reference in one of
Vertue’s notebooks to him supplying ‘parcels of Pink’
to Mary Beale in 1654 and 1658.2
Via his family, he certainly knew the Beales well
and shared East Anglian connections with them and
Nathaniel Thach (cat. 28).3 He kept a house in the
country (his family home of Little Horringer Hall in
Suffolk, which still stands) but also had a residence
in London: firstly in St Martin-in-the-Fields, and
subsequently (after his marriage in 1664) in Long
Acre – the same street as John Hoskins the younger
and close to Cooper’s house in Henrietta Street. The
inclusion of one of his works in Michael Rosse’s sale
of 1723 suggests that he was also acquainted with the
Gibson and Rosse families.
Snelling was clearly a clever and competent artist,
able to paint with some distinction and enjoy a
sustained level of patronage. His earliest miniature
was of a royal subject – Charles I, from a Van Dyck,
dated 1647 (Chiddingstone Castle). His subjects were
often members of the court, which he frequented in
his appointment as Esquire of the Body to the king (an
appointment he regained in 1660). It is from this arena
that this portrait of a courtly lady is taken, datable to
the mid-1650s. Beale records some near-transactions
with him in his ‘Notebooks’ (1671), where Snelling
offers a rather disrespectful low price for a painting.4
His offer to buy a painting by the celebrated artist
Hans Rottenhamer (1564–1625) may, however, suggest
he had acquired some level of wealth by that date.
1 ‘Vertue Note Books Volume 1’, in The Walpole Society, vol. 18, 1929–30
(Oxford, 1930), p. 116.
(Oxford, 1936), p. 7, p. 168.
3 Mary Edmond, ‘Limners and Picturemakers’, in The Walpole Society, vol.
47 (1978–80), p. 107, discovered Snelling’s geographical connections to the
Craddocks, Mary Beale’s family.
4 The Art world in Britain 1660–1735, available online at
http://artworld.york.ac.uk.
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101
Cat. 37
follow the court to Oxford, he probably spent most
of his time at Wilton House during the Civil War.4
During the Commonwealth period, when this portrait
of Elizabeth was painted, Gibson lived under the
care of Pembroke’s nephew. This level of patronage
represented financial security, but may also have
limited Gibson’s exposure, both to alternative patrons
and to fresh artistic influences.
The present miniature, one of Gibson’s betterknown works,5 demonstrates his continuing patronage
and links with the Pembroke family.6 Elizabeth
married, c.1653, Charles Dormer, 2nd Earl of
Carnarvon (1632–1709), grandson of the recently
deceased 4th Earl of Pembroke.7 Gibson painted
Elizabeth on several occasions; a particularly close
example is now in the collection of the Fitzwilliam
Museum, Cambridge (acc. no. 3912), with another
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1 A long standing confusion over the multitude of variant signatures for this
artist was finally resolved in 1981 by J. Murdoch and J. Murrell (see Burlington
Magazine, vol. 123, no. 938, May 1981, pp. 282–9, 291), when it was confirmed
that throughout his life Gibson referred to himself variously as ‘Dick’, ‘Dirk’
and ‘Dwarf’.
2 Anne appears in Van Dyck’s portrait of Mary, Duchess of Richmond at
Blenheim Palace.
3 Cooper lived in Henrietta Street from 1650; prior to that date he was living
with John Hoskins in Bedford Street, Covent Garden.
4 Although Mary Edmond suggests that Cooper may have followed the court
to York (Mary Edmond, ‘Limners and Picturemakers’, Walpole Society, vol.
47 (1978–80), p. 102), he appears to have been in London from 1642, where
he presumably painted the portrait of the Countess of Devonshire (cat. 7).
5 It is published in, for example: J.J. Foster, Samuel Cooper and the English
Miniature Painters of the XVIIth Century, 2 vols., (London, 1914-–16), vol. 1,
p. 118, n. 4; John Murdoch and Jim Murrell, The English Miniature, (London
and New Haven, 1981); Daphne Foskett, Miniatures Dictionary and Guide,
(1987), p. 125, pl. 24D and p. 547; and Catharine MacLeod and Julia Marciari
Alexander et al., Painted Ladies: Women at the Court of Charles II, exh. cat.
(London and New Haven, 2001–2), pp. 105–6 and p. 241.
6 For a portrait of the sitter’s mother by Cooper see cat. 15.
7 A portrait of her husband by Gibson, possibly a pendant to the current
miniature, was sold Bonhams, London, 22nd April 1998, lot 18, signed with
monogram and dated ‘1656’.
thought to be her in the Victoria and Albert Museum
(P.15–1926). A later portrait of her, dating from c.1665,
is in the Paul Mellon Collection, Yale Center for
British Art (B1974.2.44).
Just two weeks after Cooper’s death in 1672, Gibson
was awarded the post of ‘picturemaker’ to Charles
II. This short-lived appointment was surrendered to
Nicholas Dixon (cat. 63) in the following year, Gibson
taking on instead the role of drawing master to the
daughters of James II. He moved to Amsterdam for
a time, accompanying Princess Mary there for her
marriage to Prince William of Orange in 1677. On
his return to London in 1688, he moved in with his
daughter Susannah-Penelope, who by then was living
in Samuel Cooper’s previous house in Henrietta Street,
where he died in 1690.
Richard Gibson (b.c.1605/15–90)
Portrait of Elizabeth, Countess of Carnarvon (1633–78), 1657
Oval, 82 mm (3 ¼ in.) high
Signed with conjoined initials ‘DG’,1 and on the
reverse: ‘Elizabeth/ Capell Countess/ of Caernarvon/
Ano 1657/ DGibson. Fe’
Provenance
The Collection of the Duke of Beaufort, Badminton
House, by descent; Christie’s, London, 13th
December 1983, lot 81; Christie’s, London, 18th
December 1990, lot 89; Dumas Collection, no. 223.
Lent by the Scottish National Portrait Gallery (Dumas
Egerton Trust)
Richard Gibson was also known as ‘Dick’ or ‘Dwarf’
Gibson (hence the conjoined signature of ‘DG’ on
this miniature). He was a well-known figure at the
court of Charles I and Henrietta Maria, his diminutive
stature and talent as an artist marking him as somewhat
102
unique within the royal entourage.
Gibson met his future wife, Anne Sheppard
(d.1707), also a dwarf, when in the service of Philip
Herbert, 4th Earl of Pembroke.2 Their marriage took
place at St Pancras, Soper Lane, London amidst great
celebration in 1641, the bride being given away by the
king.
Gibson and his family had a house in Long Acre,
Covent Garden, close to Cooper’s house in Henrietta
Street.3 Circumstantial evidence would suggest that
the two men married in the same year and were
therefore close in age. Despite these connections,
geographical circumstances kept them somewhat at a
distance professionally, at least until the Restoration.
In the later 1630s, during the period of time Cooper
was possibly abroad, Gibson was present at court, in
the capacity of page to Charles I, with artists such as
John Hoskins the elder (cat. 9) and David des Granges
(cat. 29). Although, like Cooper, Gibson remained
in London during the early 1640s, choosing not to
103
Cat. 38
Cat. 39
Samuel Cooper
Portrait of ‘A Lady Carew’, probably Sarah, Lady Carew (née Hungerford, d.1671),
1st wife of Sir John Carew, 3rd Baronet of Antony (1635–92), c.1655
Samuel Cooper
Portrait of ‘A Lady Carew’, probably Sarah, Lady Carew (née Hungerford, d.1671),
1st wife of Sir John Carew, 3rd Baronet of Antony (1635–92), c.1655 and later
Oval, 59mm, (2 3/8 in.) high
Signed in gold with interlaced initials ‘SC’
a table book
Signed in gold with interlaced initials ‘SC’, inscribed
on the back in graphite ‘92’
A label packed in the frame is inscribed in ink: ‘50gs /
bought / at / Wellenborough / House. The seat / of the
late Lord / Sussex – in / April 18[0?6?]1’ and written
across, possibly by a different hand: ‘Cooper’s / Wife /
by Cooper’; and in graphite ‘48’
Provenance
By descent in the Carew-Pole family, Antony House,
Cornwall.
Provenance
According to the label above, the Earls of Sussex;1
Acquired by Alexander Dyce; By whom bequeathed to
the Victoria & Albert Museum in 1869.
(Dyce.92)
104
Described by John Murdoch as ‘one of the most
beautiful, curiously hieratic, images of women
produced by Cooper in the late 1650s’, this portrait
exists in two versions, both by Cooper. Cat. 38 is
considered to be the prime autograph version, and, like
its pendant of Sir John Carew, cat. 40, has apparently
been in the possession of the Carew Pole family at
Antony House, Cornwall, since it was painted. The
signature type with interlaced ‘SC’ initials is only
found, with one exception, in works painted from 1653
onwards.
The family provenance and traditional identification
of the portrait as ‘Lady Carew’ would seem to leave
little doubt that the miniature represents a Lady Carew
of the 1650s. The question is, however, which one?
The supposed ‘Lady Carew’ that the present
miniature was exhibited most recently as in the 1974
National Portrait Cooper exhibition,2 the wife of the
Regicide ‘Sir John Carew (d.1660)’, can certainly be
ruled out, for this John Carew was in fact neither a
105
‘Sir’, nor married.
The portrait’s provenance at Antony House may
at first suggest that we can also rule out the (related)
Carew baronets of Haccombe in Devon, of whom the
‘Lady Carew’ in the mid-1650s was Elizabeth, wife of
Sir Thomas Carew, 1st Bt. of Haccombe. However,
that this Elizabeth was an especially important
Carew, being the daughter of Sir Henry Carew, Kt. of
Bickleigh, and thus her marriage in 1653 (at around the
time this miniature was painted) united two branches
of the same family, means we cannot disregard her as a
candidate.
The link with Antony House would indicate that
the most likely identification is Sarah Hungerford
(d.1671), the wife of Sir John Carew (1635–92), 3rd
Bt. of Antony, who was the daughter of Anthony
Hungerford of Farleigh Castle in Somerset. Her
granddaughter, Sarah, by her marriage to the Rev.
Charles Pole became the progenitor of the PoleCarews, whose family still own the portrait today.
Unfortunately, we have no date of birth for this Sarah,
and nor a firm date of marriage, only that she married
Sir John ‘before 1664’, but the fact that the pendant to
this portrait (cat. 40) can with some confidence be said
to be Sir John Carew, 3rd Bt., means that the sitter here
is most likely his wife.
Equally unfortunate is the fact that the second
version of this miniature (cat. 39) is of no help when
it comes to identifying the sitter. It was bequeathed to
the Victoria & Albert Museum by Alexander Dyce in
1869 as a portrait of ‘Cooper’s Wife’. But there is no
resemblance to the undoubted portrait of Christiana
Cooper in the Portland Collection at Welbeck Abbey
(fig. 28)3 and therefore that identification can be
discounted.4 Nor is there any possible connection
between the presumed provenance of cat. 39, from
the Earls of Sussex and the Carew family. For many
years cat. 39 was regarded as an inferior copy by
another and later hand, and certainly when compared
directly to cat. 38, it lacks the genius of Cooper’s most
accomplished work, not least because the angle of
the head has been unsatisfactorily changed. However,
the overall quality suggests that it is at least a partly
autograph replica, perhaps originally an unfinished
studio head worked up by another hand at a
later date.5
rc & bg
(Fig. 28) Samuel Cooper, Portrait of the artist’s wife, Christiana.
Despite its unfinished state,one of Cooper’s most engaging portraits.
1 The 3rd Earl of Sussex was Henry Yelverton (1728–99), after his death the
title became extinct. Their main seat was at Easton Maudit in
Northamptonshire, not far from Wellingborough, which may account for the
confused inscription.
2 National Portrait Gallery, London, ‘Samuel Cooper and his contemporaries’,
1974, no. 74. This exhibition followed the identity given in the Royal
Academy’s, ‘Age of Charles II’, London, 1960–61, no. 589, as ‘Lady Carew,
wife of the Regicide’. In the 1865 South Kensington exhibition no. 364, it was
simply ‘Lady Carew’.
106
3 For which see R.W. Goulding, ‘The Welbeck Abbey Miniatures belonging
to His Grace the Duke of Portland’, in The Walpole Society, vol. 4, 1914–15
(Oxford, 1916), pl. XI, no. 71.
4 As indeed it was by Redgrave in 1874, p. 8 (‘said to be the painter’s wife, but
more probably of Lady Carew of Antony’).
5 See John Murdoch, Seventeenth-Century English Miniatures in the Collection
of the Victoria and Albert Museum (London, 1997), p.145–6, for the V&A’s
latest cataloguing of the miniature.
107
Cat.40
Samuel Cooper
Portrait of Sir John Carew, 3rd Baronet of Antony (1635–92), late 1650s
Provenance
By descent in the Carew-Pole family,
Antony House, Cornwall.
Like its pendant, this striking and unusual portrait
has been the subject of some confusion over the
sitter’s identity. It has most recently been exhibited
as a portrait of John Carew, the regicide, but in the
1865 South Kensington miniatures exhibition it was
called ‘Sir John Carew’ (1635–92).1 This traditional
identification is almost certainly correct, and the
present writer sees2 a convincing likeness when
compared to John Riley’s portrait of Sir John, still
in the collection at Antony, painted perhaps 30
years later.
While the attribution to Cooper is not in doubt,
there are some unusual aspects to the miniature.
The use of a plain azure background is uncommon
in Cooper’s work and could be considered archaic.
If original (and perhaps tellingly no signature is
visible here), its intention was likely to be purely for
the dramatic effect of isolating the head without the
distractions of a naturalistic background. The over-theshoulder pose is also relatively rare for one of Cooper’s
male sitters, the closest visual comparisons being
the portrait of Hugh May dated 1653 in the Royal
Collection and that of George Vernon dated 1660 in
a private collection.3 Carew was too young to take any
part in the Civil War, and held no offices under the
Protectorate. He was appointed to both the militia
commissions for Cornwall of 1659 and 1660, at which
date this miniature may have been painted.
rc
1 ‘Special Exhibition of Portrait Miniatures’, South Kensington Museum
(V&A), 1865, no. 361.
2 In contradiction to Richard Walker & Alastair Laing, in Portrait Miniatures in
108
National Trust Houses, vol. 2, Cornwall, Devon & Somerset (2005), p. 15.
3 Daphne Foskett, Samuel Cooper and his contemporaries , exh. cat., National
Portrait Gallery, (London, 1974), no. 92.
109
Cat.41
Samuel Cooper
Portrait of ‘Mistress Katherine Chadwick’, late 1650s
71 mm (2 ¾ in.) high
Provenance
Probably acquired in the 1960s by a former owner.
This appears to be unrecorded in any of the literature
on Cooper; it was probably acquired in the 1960s
by a former owner who was a keen collector of
110
miniatures, which he bought to augment an inherited
group of family miniatures. It is noteworthy that as
comparatively recently as the 1960s, it was reasonably
easy to find fine examples by Samuel Cooper, Hilliard
and Oliver offered for sale.
The direct, faintly wistful gaze of the sitter is
characteristic of Cooper’s style, especially at this
point in his career; this portrait may be dated in the
late 1650s.
ls
The
Restoration
111
Cat.42
Samuel Cooper
Portrait of Elizabeth, Lady Marsham (née Hammond) (1612–89), 1650s
Oval, 64 mm (2 ½ in.) high
Provenance
Christie’s, London, 15th April 1997, lot 35
This expressive portrait – arguably far more animated
than anything one might find in oil by artists such as
Lely or Walker – is a fine example of Cooper’s work
during the Interregnum. The sitter’s low-cut bodice
and hanging jewel at the centre allows a dating to the
1650s, when Cooper was frequently positioning his
sitters contra-posto – their shoulders angled in the
opposite direction to their heads, evoking movement
and energy.1
The sitter, Lady Marsham, was the daughter of
Sir William Hammond of St Alban’s Court, Kent.
She married Sir John Marsham, a chancery clerk and
politician, in 1631 and had two sons and a daughter
by him. Sir John Marsham was appointed to the Court
of Chancery in 1638 and following his support of
King Charles I during the Civil War, lost his seat in
Parliament. Following the Royalists’ defeat and after
compounding for his estates, he retired to Whorn
Place, Kent, until the Restoration when he was elected
MP for Rochester, and was later restored his clerkship,
being created a baronet in 1663.
lh
1 See also cat. 45.
112
113
Cat. 43
Samuel Cooper
Portrait of Thomas Alcock (c.1632–after 1687?), c.1650
Back chalk heightened with white on buff paper
177 x 113 mm (7 x 4 7/16 in.)
Inscribed by the sitter on the original backboard:
‘This Picture/was drawne/for mee/at the Earle
of West/–morlands house/at Apethorpe, in
Northamptonshire/by the Greate, (tho’ little) Limner,
the then famous Mr. Cooper of Covent/Garden: when I
was/eighteen years of/age/Thomas Alcock/preceptor’.
Provenance
Dr Richard Rawlinson (1690–1755), by whom
bequeathed to the Bodleian Library;
transferred to the Ashmolean Museum, 1897.
Lent by the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford
(WA18971.33)
‘Perhaps the most beautiful individual portrait drawing
of the seventeenth century executed in England’ in the
114
opinion of John Woodward, this is the finest surviving
example of Cooper’s rare chalk portrait studies; only
a handful of drawings by him are now known.1 In his
own lifetime, this aspect of his work was specifically
admired by Edward Norgate in his Miniatura, or the
Art of Limning, written c.1648–9: ‘The very worthy
and generous Mr Samuel Cooper, whose rare pencill,
though it equall if not exceed the very best of Europe,
Yet it is a measuring cast whether in this i.e. crayon
he does not exceed himself … Those crayon drawings
made by the Gentile Mr Samuel Cooper with a white
and black Chalke upon a Coloured paper are for
likeness, neatness and roundness abastanza da fare
stupire e marvigliare ogni acutissimo ingegno.’2
The sitter, Thomas Alcock, annotated the original
backboard of the drawing, stating that it was drawn
when he was 18 years old, and that he was then a
preceptor or tutor in the household of the Earl of
Westmorland; it has generally been thought by recent
commentators on the drawing 3 that nothing further
115
was known about him. But they have overlooked the
first modern edition of a curious work, The Famous
Pathologist or The Noble Mountebank…, 1961, in
which a certain Thomas Alcock recalled an escapade
of c.1675–6 when he assisted his then master, John
Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, to assume the guise of
an Italian quack doctor under the pseudonym of
Alexander Bendo, at one point helping him to dress
up and pass himself off as a ‘grave Matron’, giving
him access to ladies, with whom he ‘did her [i.e.
Bendo’s/Rochester’s] business Effectually’.4 In 1687,
as a New Year’s gift for Rochester’s daughter, Lady
Ann Baynton, Alcock transcribed his only copy of
the printed broadside bill that had been issued by
‘Bendo’ to promote his activities, and described the
deception in an accompanying dedicatory letter.
Alexander Bendo’s Bill is Rochester’s only surviving
prose work, an ironic parody in which he argues
that it is his own class that really belong to the same
deceiving profession as Bendo: ‘… so you see the
Politician is, & must be a Mountebank in State Affairs’,
thus the ‘People are deluded … kept & established in
Subjection, Peace, and Obedience, He [the governing
class] in Greatness, wealth and Power’.5 As Alcock
noted on the title page of his dedication, driving home
Rochester’s intentions: ‘[He] shott his Experimental
Darts at the Greedy to be Wounded … Si populus vult
decipi, decipiantur’ (‘if the people wish to be deceived,
then let them be deceived’).
Vivian de Solo Pinta, the editor of Alcock’s text,
argued that he was the subject of this drawing by
Samuel Cooper, a vital clue lying not only in his name,
but in the fact that he was at one time a member of
the Earl of Westmorland’s household (de Solo Pinta
believed this to have been Charles Fane, 3rd Earl
[1634–91], but it must have been Mildmay Fane, 2nd
Earl [1602–66], who inherited the title in 1629).6 If
indeed this was the same Thomas Alcock who was
Rochester’s collaborator, it would almost certainly have
been through his connection with the Fane family that
he entered Rochester’s service; the 2nd Earl’s nephew,
Sir Francis Fane (d.1691) – whom Alcock probably
knew as a youth – was a dramatist of some ability, and
was a friend and admirer of Rochester, to whom he
dedicated several works. To judge from his edition
of The Famous Pathologist…, Alcock was a man of
some wit and learning (as one might expect from a
former tutor); exactly what his role might have been
in Rochester’s household is uncertain, but perhaps he
acted as his secretary, as well as assisting in escapades
such as the Bendo affair (from his account, he seems
almost a precursor of Don Giovanni’s manservant
Leporello).
In 1687, when Thomas Alcock presented The
Famous Pathologist… to Lady Ann Baynton, he was
living at Shirehampton, near Bristol, only a few miles
from Sir Francis Fane at Henbury, Gloucestershire;
perhaps Alcock lived in a Fane house or was in
receipt of a pension from the family.7 The dating of
this drawing is speculative, but the dress and hairstyle
compares with Cooper miniatures c.1650 (that of Sir
Thomas Rivers, for example, cat. 18). This would
suggest that Alcock was born c.1632.8
Alcock’s inscription also includes a fleeting firsthand description of Samuel Cooper’s appearance: ‘the
Greate, (tho’ little) Limner’. His small stature was also
remarked on by Cosimo III de’ Medici in 1669: ‘a tiny
man, all wit and courtesy’.
1 Cooper’s surviving drawings were last discussed and illustrated in Lindsay
Stainton & Christopher White, Drawing in England from Hilliard to Hogarth,
(London, 1987), pp.110–116.
2 Edward Norgate, Miniatura or the Art of Limning, 1997 ed. J. M. Muller
& J. Murrell, pp.101–2, 194–5, 256. As Muller and Murrell note, Norgate
here adapts Vasari’s praise of Giulio Clovio (for his illumination of the Corpus
Christi procession in the Farnese Hours) to the advantage of an English limner:
‘cosa tutta da fare stupire e maravigliare ogni acutissimo ingegno’ [‘something
to completely stupefy and amaze every acute wit’].
3 Including David Brown, Catalogue of the Collection of Drawings in the
Ashmolean Museum, IV: Early English Drawings, 1982, p.68, no. 115, and
Stainton & White, op.cit, p.111.
4 The identification of the sitter in this drawing as the Thomas Alcock who
was in the service of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester was first made by Vivian
de Sola Pinto in ‘The Famous Pathologist, or The Noble Mountebank, by
Thomas Alcock and John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester’, in Nottingham
University Miscellany, I (1961), pp. 7–42. Alcock noted, with some glee,
how easily ‘Bendo’, in the guise of a woman, managed ‘to be admitted into
the Bed Chamber’ (ibid pp.26–7). The Bendo episode is fully explored by
Lord Rochester’s modern biographers.
Vivian de Solo Pinta, op.cit., p. 34.
Coincidentally, Mildmay Fane, 2nd Earl of Westmorland owned one of the
rare early ms. copies of the first version of Edward Norgate’s Miniatura (now
in the Beinecke Library, Yale); see Muller & Murrell, op. cit., p. 219. Cooper’s
uncle John Hoskins seems to have been on the fringes of the tight-knit group
of virtuosos and artists (including Norgate, see Muller & Murrell, op.cit.,
pp.14–15, 221) linked to the court of Charles I – not only was he appointed
the King’s limner in 1640, but was close to the King’s physician Sir Theodore
Turquet de Mayerne – and perhaps there was some sort of connection with
the Earl of Westmorland which could account for Cooper’s presence, however
briefly, at Apethorpe, the house to which the Earl retreated c.1645–60.
Alcock signed the dedication of The Famous Pathologist or The Noble
Mountebank with a punning Latin version of his name, ‘Thomas Archigallus’
and a mock imprimatur, ‘ex Aedibus Sheerhamptoniensibs’.
It has not so far proved possible to establish Alcock’s dates conclusively; the
name was not that uncommon.
116
ls
5
6
7
8
Cat.44
Cat.44a
(Fig. 29) Samuel Cooper, Profile Portrait of
Charles II. This fine drawing by Cooper is
probably that taken at a candlelit sitting recorded
by the diarist John Evelyn in 1662.
Samuel Cooper
Portrait of King Charles II (1630–85), early 1660s
Provenance
Mrs A.E. Hiles in the early 20th century; Denys
Eyre Bower (1905–77), Chiddingstone Castle, Kent,
probably acquired before 1960; Thence to the Denys
Eyre Bower Bequest, Chiddingstone Castle, Kent.
Lent by the Trustees of the Denys Eyre Bower Bequest,
Chiddingstone Castle, Kent
There can perhaps be no greater indication of Cooper’s
standing amongst his contemporaries than the decision
by Charles II to sit to him almost immediately after
his Restoration. Recalling the events of that time, John
Aubrey indicates that a sitting to Cooper was deemed
inevitable even before Charles arrived in London,
which he did on 29th May 1660:
...knowing his majestie was a great lover of good
118
painting I must needs presume he could not but
suddenly see Mr. Cowper’s curious pieces, of whose
fame he had so much heard abroad and seene some
of his worke, and likewise that he would sitt to him
for his picture […].
Aubrey goes on to tell us that the King in fact visited
Cooper, ‘at Mr. S Cowper’s’, within two weeks of his
return, and that, ‘as he sate for his picture, he was
diverted by Mr Hobbes’s [the philosopher] pleasant
discourse’.1
It is hard to overstate what Aubrey’s record tells us
about Cooper’s reputation. First, we learn that Cooper
was recognised as the pre-eminent portraitist of the
day, whom the new regime had little choice to turn to
for help with the sizeable task of manufacturing an
iconography, not just of the new king, but, after the
Interregnum, of royalty. Secondly, there was evidently
no animus towards the artist who, more than any other,
had worked to disseminate the image of the man who
had executed the new king’s father. Finally, it seems
almost hard to believe that the newly arrived king,
London’s star attraction, went to Cooper’s studio for
his portrait, rather than summon the artist to his court.
We do not know exactly when Charles appointed
Cooper as his official Limner, but we do know that he
was to be paid £200 a year, the same salary given to
Peter Lely (and, incidentally, to Van Dyck by Charles
I). The next record of Cooper painting Charles comes
from John Evelyn’s diary, which, on 10th January
1662 relates:
Being call’d into his Majesty’s closet when Mr.
Cooper, the rare limner, was crayoning of the
King’s face and head, to make stamps for the new
mill’d money now contriving, I had the honour to
hold the candle whilst it was doing, he choosing
the night and candle-light for the better finding
out of the shadows. During this his Majesty
discours’d with me on several things relating to
painting and graving.2
The fine drawing of Charles in the Royal Collection
(fig. 29) may well relate to this sitting, although it is not
as full of ‘shadows’ as one might expect from Evelyn’s
description (the more intense contrast between light
and dark was helpful for a medallist to copy). The
inscription on the reverse of the drawing, by Jonathan
Richardson the younger (1694–1771), that Charles sat
(according to his father, Richardson the elder) for it
on ‘the very same day that He made his Publick Entry,
through London; to Loose no time in making the Dye’,
is perhaps an overly romantic tale. The dye in this case
is presumed to be one of the accession medals by John
Roettier (1631–1703).
The miniature of Charles II on display here, on loan
from Chiddingstone Castle, is undated, unsigned, and
has only a 20th century provenance. It has also suffered
in terms of condition, and has been restored both in
the face and more widely in the background.3 Despite
the damage, however, we can be confident that it is
one of Cooper’s prime portraits of Charles II. There
are two things to note about it; first, it is exceptionally
119
(Fig. 30) After Cooper, Portrait of Charles II.
A good early copy of the likeness seen in cat. 44.
(Fig. 31) Samuel Cooper, Portrait of Charles II. Cooper’s largest portrait type of Charles.
good, conveying a penetrating likeness of a king known
for his easy nature and enjoyment of life, and second,
it is unfinished, with the hair and background only
roughly blocked in. It seems almost certainly to be,
therefore, an ad vivum study retained by the artist for
use when making repetitions, just like the Buccleuch
Cromwell miniature (cat. 21).
The date of the miniature is hard to establish,
though it must have been taken sometime in the
early to mid-1660s. Cooper’s better known portrait
of Charles II, the best version of which is probably
the large miniature at Goodwood (fig. 31),4 is signed
and dated 1665, and shows the head at a slightly
different angle. A much reduced version of the head
seen in the Goodwood miniature is on display here
(Castle Howard, cat. 44a).5 There is no discernible
difference in age between that and the likeness in the
Chiddingstone miniature, which is known only in a
few undated examples, the best of which, in the Clarke
Collection, shows the king in the same flamboyant
armour as seen in Cooper’s portrait of Cosimo de
120
Medici (cat. 58). A good early copy of the Clarke
miniature, in the Wallace Collection, is illustrated
here (fig. 30).6 While the armour may at first make us
suggest a date closer to the Medici portrait, of 1669,
we can almost certainly rule out such a late date, not
least because, as seen in portraits by other artists, the
Charles of 1669/70 was beginning to the display the
priapic plumpness of Restoration legend. As noted
in the entry for Cooper’s Medici portrait, it is likely
that Cooper had access to the same suit of armour as
some sort of studio prop. It is probably more relevant,
instead, that in the Chiddingstone portrait Charles
seems to be wearing the same type of large collar seen
in the Goodwood type. The Chiddingstone portrait,
we should also note, feels a more relaxed and intimate
portrait than the Goodwood head, in which Charles
is portrayed looking regally into the distance. In the
present miniature we are reminded more of the king
seen by Evelyn, sitting and enjoying a discussion
about art.
rc & bg
1 Daphne Foskett, Samuel Cooper (1609–1672), (London, 1974), p. 45.
2 Ibid., p. 46.
3 There is, for example, a hole at the tip of the nose, and the left-hand side has
been extended at a later date.
4 Another version is in the Mauritshuis.
5 Watercolour on vellum, put down on a leaf from a table-book, oval, 29 mm
(1 1/8 in.) high. Provenance, by descent in the collection at Castle Howard,
North Yorkshire.
6 A much smaller version, with plainer armour, is at Welbeck, see R.W.
Goulding, ‘The Welbeck Abbey Miniatures belonging to His Grace the Duke
of Portland’, Walpole Society, vol. 4, 1914–15 (Oxford, 1916), no. 56, p. 84.
121
Cat.45
Samuel Cooper
Portrait of a Lady, early 1660s
Provenance
Hon. William Ashley (d.1877); His sale Christie’s,
London, 15th May 1884, lot 15, as ‘Lucy Percy,
Countess of Carlisle’ bought by ‘Joseph’ for £100–16;
Leonard Daneham Cunliffe whom bequeathed to
Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge, 1937.
Cambridge (object no. 3826)
This is one of Cooper’s most engaging post-Restoration
female portraits. The profile and turned head pose
is one that Cooper used regularly, but in its angle
of the face, it is dramatically modern, and more
adventurous than anything Cooper’s contemporaries,
even Lely, could manage. Although the sitter’s body
is presented with seemingly statuesque solidity, her
head is full of movement, as seen in the tightly sprung
curls of hair still swaying, as if the sitter has turned
suddenly towards the viewer. A quizzical, upward look
reinforces the illusion of spontaneity. Only an artist of
Cooper’s dexterity could achieve such an illusion.
Unfortunately, the sitter is unknown. The low-cut
bodice and hairstyle is dateable to the early 1660s,
for as the decade progressed women started adding
precious stones and pearls to their hair.1 At the time
of its bequest to the Fitzwilliam, the portrait was
thought to show Lucy Percy, Countess of Carlisle
(1599–1660), but this can be discounted on the basis
of the sitter’s age. Nonetheless, the miniature had
been identified as such in its first recorded exhibition
at the ‘Special Exhibition of Portrait Miniatures’ at
South Kensington Museum in 1865 (no. 497), and
was regularly published as such, including in Foster’s
Samuel Cooper and the English Miniature Painters of
1 For a similar hair style see Sir Peter Lely’s portrait of Princess Henrietta
Anne, later Duchess of Orleans (1644–70; National Portrait Gallery, London).
122
the XVIIth Century.2 It is tempting to assume that this
is the miniature sold in 1790 as ‘Lucy Percye, Countess
of Carlisle, by Cooper, fine’, however, this cannot be
proved with any certainty.3
lh
Century, 2 vols., (London, 1914–16), supplementary vol., p. 16, no. 45 as
‘Lady Lucy Percy, Countess of Carlisle’ and Appendix p. 161.
3 At Greenwood in London, London, 3rd–18th May 1790, lot 77.
123
Cat.46
Samuel Cooper
Portrait of Sir Edward Harley, KB (1624–1700), early 1660s (unfinished)
Provenance
Recorded by George Vertue in the Portland Collection
by 1743 (no. 96 in his catalogue); By descent at
Welbeck Abbey, Nottinghamshire; Private Collection.
Sir Edward Harley, a longstanding MP for
Herefordshire, presents a good example of how the
shrewder elements of the landed gentry managed
to survive the political upheavals of 17th century
England. During the Civil War, Harley was a
prominent Parliamentarian, commanding a regiment
of foot in the New Model Army and serving as a
commissioner for the surrender of Exeter and Oxford.
However, he grew increasingly concerned over the
presence of the military in Interregnum politics, and
was eventually purged from Parliament by Cromwell.
At Charles II’s Restoration, Harley shrewdly travelled
to meet the king when he landed at Dover, and was
swiftly appointed Governor of Dunkirk, where he
did much to strengthen and protect the town before
Charles II decided to sell it to the French in 1662.
Family tradition suggests that he was offered a peerage
in the Coronation honours of 1661, but declined it in
preference to being a Knight of the Bath, the sash of
which we can just see outlined in the miniature here.
A devout Presbyterian, Harley’s loyalty to the Stuarts
did not survive James II’s fervent Catholicism, and he
was later an early supporter of William III during the
revolution of 1688.
We do not know why the present miniature is
unfinished, and it cannot fall into the category of an ad
vivum study retained by the artist for making replicas
of his better known sitters. While the argument
about whether a portrait can ever reveal more than a
mere likeness will always continue, it is tempting to
see in Cooper’s portrayal of Harley something of the
description given by Harley’s son:
his features were very exact, and he had great
quickness in his eyes which commanded respect;
his temper was naturally very passionate, though
mixed with the greatest tenderness and humility.
His passion he kept under a strict restraint, and
had in a manner totally subdued, but his generosity
and tender compassion to all objects of charity
continued to the last.1
bg & lh
1 D.W. Hayton, in D. Hayton, E. Cruickshanks and S. Handley, The History of
Parliament: the House of Commons 1690–1715 (London, 2002).
124
125
Cat.47
Samuel Cooper
Portrait of a Gentleman, called Thomas Wriothesley, 4th Earl of Southampton,
Lord High Treasurer of England (1607–67), 1661
Oval, 82mm (3 ¼ in.) high
Signed in gold with interlaced initials ‘SC’
and dated ‘1661’
Provenance
Mr Browne of Shepton-Mallet; Horace Walpole, 4th
Earl of Orford (1717–97), Strawberry Hill inventory
1784 (‘More additions … Thomas Wriothesley, Earl
of Southampton, Lord Treasurer, by Samuel Cooper;
from the collection of Mr. Browne, of SheptonMallet’); Strawberry Hill sale, 1842, day 14, lot 99, sold
to Samuel Rogers Esq for £10.10s; Possibly Georgiana,
Dowager Duchess of Bedford (1781–1853); Thence
by descent, the Dukes of Bedford, Woburn Abbey,
Bedfordshire.
Lent by His Grace the Duke of Bedford and the Trustees
of the Bedford Estates
126
This is a particularly illustrative example of
Cooper’s early post-Restoration male portraits, and
demonstrates the strong characterisation rarely seen
in larger oil portraits of the same period. As a likeness
of Thomas Wriothesley, 4th Earl of Southampton,
this miniature is reasonably convincing, if Lely’s
well-known portraits of him are any guide, but one
might expect to see the sitter wearing the insignia of
the Order of the Garter, to which he was appointed
in 1650.1 The absence of the Garter insignia may
be explained by the fact that Southampton was not
formally invested as a knight until 1661, due to the
Interregnum, and it is possible that the miniature was
completed in early 1661, before any investiture took
place. Horace Walpole certainly believed it to depict
Southampton and very probably acquired it already
with this traditional identification. It was engraved for
publication in Harding’s Biographical Mirrour of 17942
while in the collection at Strawberry Hill. A copy by
Sarah, Viscountess Malden (later Countess of Essex),
was last recorded (1908) in the collection of the Earl of
Essex at Cassiobury Park.
The reason for the acquisition of the present
miniature by the Russell family, the Dukes of
Bedford, was no doubt due to the fact that Thomas
Wriothesley’s daughter, Lady Rachel Vaughan had
married Lord William Russell, son of the 5th Earl of
Bedford in 1669. Lady Rachel’s inheritance from her
father included the area of land in London now known
as Bloomsbury, which was a major addition to the
rc
1 The miniature was included as Southampton in Daphne Foskett, Samuel
Cooper and his contemporaries, exh. cat., National Portrait Gallery (London,
1974), no. 99, albeit with some reservations.
2 S. and E. Harding, The Biographical Mirrour, (1795), vol. 1, pp. 124–6.
Bedford Estates. They named their son Wriothesley
in his honour and he succeeded his grandfather as the
2nd Duke of Bedford.
At the Strawberry Hill sale of 1842, the present
miniature was bought by Samuel Rogers, banker, poet
and collector. This was probably on behalf of his friend
Georgiana, Dowager Duchess of Bedford, widow of
the 6th Duke of Bedford, who, amongst other things
had a great interest in art.
127
Cat.48
Samuel Cooper
Portrait of a Gentleman, probably Nicholas Tufton, 3rd Earl of Thanet (1631–79), c.1664
a table-book
Provenance
Friedrich Neuburg Collection, Litomerice; Hôtel
Drouot, Paris, 26 May 1939, lot 12 (as ‘James, Duke
of York’); Ernst Holzscheiter Collection, Meilen; part
1, Sotheby’s, London, 28 March 1977, lot 8; Private
Collection, America; Private Collection, UK.
This large portrait miniature by Cooper was painted
during the last ten years of his life. It is typical of the
muted colours, including rusts and browns, of his
palette at this time. Moreover, its looser, more fluid
paint application mirrors Cooper’s later style, as seen
in cat. 66.
For much of its history, the present miniature has
been thought to represent the young James II as Duke
of York.1 However, it is now thought to be of Nicholas
Tufton, 3rd Earl of Thanet (1631–79). Tufton was
painted by Cooper at least twice; another miniature of
him is in the collection of the Duke of Buccleuch, and
the likeness between the two is closely comparable.
Tufton’s father, John, the 2nd Earl of Thanet (1608–64)
was painted by Cooper’s uncle, John Hoskins.
Both father and son were strong Royalists. The 2nd
Earl was a staunch supporter of Charles I during
the Civil War, and led a regiment in 1642 to raise a
rebellion in the king’s cause. After this collapsed he
was forced to surrender and the family seat, Bodiam
Castle in East Sussex, was sold. His son, Nicholas also
played his part as a Royalist, being imprisoned in 1655
and again from 1656 to 1658 for attempting to capture
Charles II and restore him to the throne. Nicholas
married Lady Elizabeth Boyle, daughter of Richard
Boyle Earl of Burlington, 2nd Earl of Cork and Lady
Elizabeth Clifford, on 11th April 1664, an occasion
that may have been the impetus for this miniature.
er
1 Exhibited as such in Geneva, Musée d’art et d’histoire, Chefs-d’œuvre de
la miniature et de la gouache, 1956, no. 97, lent by Ernst Holzscheiter, and
published in Daphne Foskett, Samuel Cooper (1609–1672), (London, 1974),
128
p. 130, and Burlington Magazine, March 1977, no. 888, vol. 119, illustrated
p.xxxviii.
129
Cat.49
Samuel Cooper
Portrait of an Unknown Gentleman, early 1660s
Watercolour on vellum stuck down on table book leaf
Oval, 75 mm (3 in.) high
Provenance
Bequeathed by J. Francis Mallett, 1947
(1947.191.M.293).
Lent by the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford
(Min. 252)
This portrait of an unknown man wearing armour,
painted in the early 1660s, was presented to the
Ashmolean in 1947 as part of a larger bequest from
J. Francis Mallett. Mallett, a noted connoisseur, also
bequeathed watches, Limoges enamels, medieval
ivories and watches, all largely from the 17th century.1
As Daphne Foskett noted in the 1974 exhibition
catalogue 2 this miniature was previously attributed to
Thomas Flatman but is clearly from Cooper’s hand.
At first sight this seems a rather lacklustre new
addition to Cooper’s opus; however, on closer
inspection the miniature is full of carefully observed,
beautifully rendered details that are the hallmarks
of Cooper’s lifelikebrushwork. The simple dark grey
background is a perfectly judged backdrop for the
sitter’s expensive ochre silk sleeve, the subtle pattern
flecked with gold paint. Just beneath the single loose
leather tie on the sitter’s armour, which adds a clever
asymmetry, is the blue and pink sky of a summer’s
evening reflected in the breastplate. Throughout his
career, Cooper clearly found it necessary to repeat
poses, costumes and backgrounds but, as can be
seen in this example, every portrait was conceived as
an highly individual image, imperfections carefully
recorded.
er
1 See Richard Walker, Miniatures (Ashmolean Handbooks), (Oxford, 1997),
no. 10, p. 20.
130
Portrait Gallery (London, 1974), no. 93.
131
Cat.50
(Fig. 32) ‘Samuel Cooper’s Pocketbook’
Samuel Cooper
Portrait of an Unknown Man (unfinished), early 1660s
a table book
Rectangular, 96 mm (3 ¾ in.) high, with a drawn oval
Inscribed on the reverse in sanguine wash in sanguine
wash: ‘munday at no [on]’; and in graphite: ‘Cooper’
Set into the ‘Pocket book’ (V&A 460–1892,
see fig.32)
Provenance
Presumably acquired from Cooper’s estate by the
Rosses, or perhaps by Mrs Priestman (d.1724), sister of
Michael Rosse; Michael Rosse (?) sale, 2nd April 1723;
eventually purchased by Edwin (Durning) Lawrence
before 1862, and sold by him to the Museum for £525
in 1892.
Lent by the Victoria & Albert Museum (449.1892)
132
This miniature comes from the bound book commonly
known as ‘Samuel Cooper’s Pocket Book’, which
entered the collection of the Victoria and Albert
Museum in 1892. The book consists of 188 pages of
paper, all blank apart from the 14 miniatures and verso
of page one, which is inscribed: ‘Samuel Cooper’s /
Pocket Book / This celebrated Artist / was born in
London /1609 died in London 1672 / buried in Pancras
Church’, and, at the top, in pencil: ‘18 miniatures’,
and in the centre (upside down): ‘15 EDI (?)’. The red
morocco leather binding dates to the late 17th or early
18th century; the endpapers to the 19th century.1 The
composition and provenance of the book suggests that
it may have been originally compiled by SusannahPenelope Rosse or by her husband, combining
Cooper’s studio sketches with her own efforts in one
volume. The whole was restored by Edwin Lawrence
during his ownership of it in the later 19th century.
Since the late 19th century the ‘Pocket Book’ has
provided scholars with the opportunity to explore
Cooper’s working methods and to attempt some
commentary on the influence he had on SusannahPenelope Rosse. In turn, the discovery of the two
artists’ work bound together confirms the close
geographical, personal and working relationships of
the Cooper/Gibson families.
The attribution to two different hands within the
‘Pocket Book’ was firmly made by Graham Reynolds in
the 1970s, when the book was broken up for framing
and this became evident.2 Painted during the early
1660s, this portrait of an unknown man is one of
four now given to Cooper. As an unfinished sketch,
this portrait, and others by Cooper in the pocket
1 John Murdoch, Seventeenth Century English Miniatures in the Victoria and
Albert Museum (London, 1997). cat. 90, p. 166.
2 Graham Reynolds, Samuel Cooper’s Pocket Book, V&A Brochure No. 8
(London, 1975).
book, arguably have less potency than other ad vivum
sketches from this point late in his career. It could be
suggested that the pocket book represents unfinished
or abandoned limnings, in contrast to the group of
five sketches now in the Royal Collection, all dating
to the mid-1660s, which demonstrate a self-conscious
virtuosity in ‘show-pieces’.3This is also evidenced by
the varying lack of finish in the ‘Pocket Book’ faces, in
contrast to the Royal Collection portraits, where there
is a distinct yet articulate contrast between face and
sketched costume.
er
3 The group now in the Royal Collection are portraits of: the Duchess of
Richmond; the Duchess of Cleveland; Catherine of Braganza; George Monck,
Duke of Albemarle and James Scott, Duke of Monmouth (cat. 52).
133
Cat.51
Susannah-Penelope Rosse (née Gibson; c.1655–1700)
Portrait of an Unknown Woman (unfinished), c.1690/5
a table book
Oval, 82 mm (3 ¼ in.) high
Set into the ‘Pocket book’ [V&A 460–1892]
Provenance
Presumably acquired from Cooper’s estate by the
Rosses, or perhaps by Mrs Priestman (d.1724), sister of
Michael Rosse; Michael Rosse (?) sale, 2nd April 1723;
eventually purchased by Edwin (Durning) Lawrence
before 1862, and sold by him to the Museum for £525
in 1892.
Lent by the Victoria and Albert Museum (447.1892)
The ‘Pocket Book’ in the Victoria and Albert Museum
holds nine miniatures by Rosse – some, as with this
example, unfinished. Rosse held a unique position
in Covent Garden’s artistic community in the later
17th century. As the daughter of the court miniaturist
134
Richard Gibson (also known as ‘Dwarf Gibson’) and
his wife, Anne, who also held a court appointment, she
would have been aware of the intimate machinations
of the court (for an example of Gibson’s work, see cat.
37). Through her parents and their connections, she
appears to have had direct access both to important
sitters and to the studios of the artists they frequented.
There is no documented evidence pertaining to her
contact with Samuel Cooper, but it is reasonable to
assume that he would have been a prominent local
figure during her formative years (she would have been
around 17 years of age when he died in 1672). Vertue
states: ‘Her first manner she learnt of her father, but
being inamour’d with Cooper’s limnings, she studied
& copy’d them to perfection.’1
From the inclusion of her miniatures together with
Cooper’s in the ‘Pocket Book’ (cat. 50), together with
its provenance to the Rosse family, an assumption can
be made that these were made available to Susannah to
study the work of the master and learn his technique.
The group by Susannah includes two self-portraits,
painted perhaps ten years apart and therefore this
group was undoubtedly assembledover a reasonable
period of time.
Susannah-Penelope Rosse may have felt Cooper’s
presence even after his death, as her in-laws bought
his grand house in Henrietta Street when his widow,
Christiana, moved out of his house in 1673. They were
still living there when Susannah married, probably
around 1676 and shortly after the newlyweds moved
into the same street from Long Acre, where the
miniaturist John Hoskins the younger also resided.
After her marriage, Susannah’s connections to
court life, and the artistic circle that presided over
it, remained strong. Her husband, Michael Rosse
(d.1734), a court jeweller2 and a member of the
Society of the Virtuosi of St Luke, was also intimately
acquainted with the leading arbiters of taste.3
Rosse’s career was neither straightforwardly
professional nor amateur. Her somewhat tentative
hand has not the confidence of the professional and
she appears at her most relaxed and self-assured when
painting family and friends. The ‘Pocket Book’ is a
unique log of many strands of her life and career – her
connection with Cooper, her working methods and a
record of her immediate family circle.
(Oxford, 1930), p.117.
2 Michael Rosse followed his father into this profession and the two men held
respected positions at court. The London Gazette, 1st October, 1683, notes
that: ‘These are to give Notice, that the Jewels of his late Highness Prince
Rupert, have been particularly valued and appraised by Mr. Isac Legouch, Mr.
Christopher Rosse, and Mr. Richard Beauvoir Jewellers, the whole amounting
to Twenty thousand Pounds, and will be sold by way of lottery, each lot to be
Five Pounds.’ (The Art world in Britain 1660–1735, available online at
http://artworld.york.ac.uk).
3 Society of the Virtuosi of St Luke (act. c.1689–1743), also known as St Luke’s
Club or Vandyke’s Club, can be seen as the first artist’s society in Britain.
Primarily a social club, the men met in coffee houses and taverns to debate
artistic taste and judgment. Members included the carver Grinling Gibbons
and Samuel Cooper’s earliest biographer, Richard Graham. Michael Rosse,
Susannah’s husband joined in 1698.
er
135
Cat.52
Samuel Cooper
Portrait of James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth and Buccleuch (1649–85), c.1663–4
Watercolour on vellum laid on card with gessoed back
Provenance
The artist’s widow, from whom probably bought by
Charles II or James II; In the Royal Collection by 1706.
Lent by Her Majesty the Queen and the Trustees of the
Royal Collection (RCIN 420645)
This is one of a group of five unfinished large-scale
studies painted directly from the sitters – a similar
example is the study of Oliver Cromwell in the
Buccleuch Collection (cat. 21) – that were probably
intended as patterns from which Cooper could develop
completed miniatures as required, and were among a
number of works in the studio at the time of his death
in 1672. They may originally have been rectangular,
later being shaped to ovals, probably when they
still belonged to Mrs Cooper.1 All the sitters were of
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special significance to Charles II. The studies depict
his wife, Catherine of Braganza, probably painted
shortly after her arrival in England in 1662; his mistress
Barbara Villiers, Duchess of Cleveland, the mother
of six of his children, painted c.1661; Frances Stuart,
Duchess of Richmond, with whom the king was much
smitten, probably painted c.1663–4 shortly after she
first arrived at court; George Monck, 1st Duke of
Albemarle, who had in large measure ensured Charles
II’s Restoration in 1660, a study which Cosimo III
de’ Medici saw in Cooper’s studio in 1669 (‘per che
ho memoria che fussero condotti con molto spirito, e
felicità’, he recalled in 1674) and the subject of this
study, the king’s natural son, James Scott.
These studies were acquired from the artist’s
widow, Christiana, at some time after 1677, either by
Charles II, or perhaps in a later purchase by James II.2
In 1673, Charles II agreed to grant Mrs Cooper a
lifetime annuity of £200, in return for ‘several pictures
or pieces of limning of a very considerable value’, but
his subsequent failure to honour this arrangement
may well have led her to retain a number of items,
and in 1674 Grand Duke Cosimo III de’ Medici,
who had had his likeness taken by Cooper when he
visited London in 1669, opened negotiations through
his London agent Francesco Terriesi to buy a group
of miniatures from her.3 At the outset he expressed
an interest in acquiring the portrait of the Duke of
Monmouth among others; he had been particularly
struck by the bold, unfinished portraits he had seen
for himself in Cooper’s studio, which he knew to be
vividly characterised and unquestionably by the master
himself, with no gratuitous ‘finishing’ by other hands,
admiring the authenticity that derived from the sense
of immediacy and spontaneity of response to the
sitter, thus elevating the sketch to a special status in an
artist’s oeuvre. Perhaps because of the high price of
£100 for each miniature initially asked by Mrs Cooper,
discussions lapsed, resuming again in 1677, when a
list of miniatures, at a new price of £50 each, compiled
by Thomas Platt, former English Consul at Leghorn,
included amongst the large heads unfinished and
without draperies, one of ‘The Duke of Monmouth at
the age of 15’, as well as the others now in the Royal
Collection. Still no sale was concluded, but as late as
1683, Cosimo III was again in correspondence with
Terriesi about a possible sale, in which two likenesses
of the young duke were among the works under
consideration, one ‘at the age of 15 or 16, almost
finished’ and another ‘just begun’. It is probable that at
least the first of these references is to the present large
sketch, that estimate of the sitter’s age providing a date
of c.1664–5. In the end, however, ‘unless His Highness
by express command renews the commission’ the
idea of acquiring a group of works by Cooper was
abandoned,4 and Mrs Cooper must therefore have had
to reconsider a sale to the Royal Collection.
In this instance, no finished portrait relating to
this sketch is known; it is a strikingly direct and vivid
image, conveying much of the boy’s charm that so
137
captivated his father. Although described as ‘at the age
of 15 or 16’ in the lists sent to Cosimo III, one wonders
if this study might not have painted a little earlier, so
young does he seem.
James Scott was the eldest illegitimate son of Charles
II, born to Lucy Walters in Holland in 1649, where
Charles was living in exile in the years before the
Restoration. The king had him brought to London
in 1662; titles and honours followed swiftly. In 1663
he was created Duke of Monmouth, and in the same
year – days after his 14th birthday – he married
one of the great heiresses, Anne Scott, Countess of
Buccleuch (1651–1732), whose surname he took, and
was created Duke of Buccleuch. It could perhaps have
been around this time that he sat to Samuel Cooper.
As a youth, the king doted on him, treating him as
if he were a Prince of Wales, and he was renowned
1 Jane Roberts (ed.), Royal Treasures: A Golden Jubilee Celebration, (London,
2002), p. 126.
2 This sketch, and that of Frances Stuart, Duchess of Richmond, may have been
acquired by James II as the entries which refer to them in his inventory list
them under the heading ‘Pictures in WHITEHALL of his Majesty’s, that were
not the late King’s [Charles II’s]’. All five studies were recorded as being in the
Royal Collection by 1706.
138
for his good looks and military prowess, celebrated
in Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel (1681): ‘Of
all this progeny was none/ So beautiful, so brave as
Absolon’. Samuel Pepys, however, was a good deal
more critical: in December 1666, he noted that the
young duke spent ‘his time the most viciously and idly
of any man’, predicting that he would not ‘be fit for
any thing’. From the late 1670s, Monmouth unwisely
allied himself with opposition to the idea of his uncle,
the Catholic Duke of York, succeeding as king; a rift
with his father eventually led to Monmouth’s exile to
the Low Countries. Attempting to establish his claim
to the throne after the death of his father, he led a
rebellion against his uncle, the new King James II, but
was defeated at the Battle of Sedgemoor in July 1685
and then executed for treason.
ls
3 A.M. Crinò ‘The Relations between Samuel Cooper and the Court of
Cosimo III’, The Burlington Magazine, Vol.99, 1957, pp.16–21
4 At a late stage in the negotiations, in 1683, perhaps uncertain of his own
judgment of pictures, Terriesi asked the portrait painter Benedetto Gennari,
who was then working in London, for his opinion on the remaining miniatures
by Cooper, but Gennari advised against proceeding. See A. M. Crino, op.cit.
139
Cat.53
Samuel Cooper
Portrait of James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth and Buccleuch (1649–85), 1667
Signed and dated on recto at lower left: ‘S.C. / 1667’
Inscribed erroneously on 1860s gilt-metal scrolled
cartouche fixed to bottom of locket: ‘EARL OF
CHESTERFIELD’
Provenance
Matthew Uzielli; his sale, Christie’s, London,
12th–20th April 1861, lot 850; purchased by P. & D.
Colnaghi and Co. for Walter Francis, 5th Duke of
Buccleuch and 7th Duke of Queensberry; Thence by
family descent.
This finely painted and well-preserved miniature
is from the later phase of Cooper’s career after the
Restoration and shows the 18-year-old Monmouth
as a soldier in armour and wearing a lace cravat
and full wig. The miniature was once erroneously
thought to represent Philip Stanhope, 2nd Earl of
Chesterfield (d.1713), whose title was engraved on the
cartouche attached to the bottom of the locket. Many
portraits and relics of Monmouth are still preserved
in the Buccleuch Collection, including oils by Lely,
Huysmans and Kneller and miniatures by SusannahPenelope Rosse and Nicholas Dixon. Cooper’s
well-known large unfinished portrait miniature of
Monmouth, which was probably painted c.1663–4, is
in the Royal Collection, while a copy of that work by
S.P. Rosse is preserved in the Buccleuch Collection.1
James Scott, Duke of Monmouth and Buccleuch,
was the eldest illegitimate son of Charles II and his
mistress Lucy Walter (c.1630–58). He was born in
Rotterdam and in 1663 his father created him Duke of
Monmouth and made him a Knight of the Garter. That
year his marriage was arranged to the Scottish heiress
Anne Scott, Countess of Buccleuch, and a day later
the king made them Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch.
Monmouth was a soldier and popular figure who in
1665 served in the English fleet during the Second
Anglo-Dutch War. After the death of his father in
1685, Monmouth led a rebellion against his uncle, the
new King James VII and II, but in July that year he
was defeated at the Battle of Sedgemoor and beheaded
for treason.
sl
Portrait Gallery (London, 1974), pp. 34–5, no. 78 and p. 100, no. 190.
140
141
Cat.54
Samuel Cooper
Portrait of an Unknown Gentleman (formerly called John Wilmot,
2nd Earl of Rochester, 1647–80), mid-1660s
Provenance
De la Hay Bequest, 1936 [1936.103].
Lent by The Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford
(Min. 174)
This portrait of a young man, wearing an expensive
grey silk coat decorated with orange ribbons on the
shoulders, is very close in date to a portrait by Cooper,
now thought to be the Earl of Thanet (cat. 48). The
sitter’s sensuous lips and hooded eyes probably led
to his misidentification as John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of
Rochester.1 Other portraits of Rochester also mirror
1 Two portraits of Rochester wearing similar dress to the sitter in this
portrait(including robes with shoulder ribbons in crimson/orange hues) are
alater oil (c.1677) by Sir Peter Lely (Victoria and Albert Museum 491–1882)
142
his flamboyant character, a feat which Cooper would
surely have relished if tasked with painting such a
notorious sitter.2
Painted in the mid-1660s, this miniature shows the
looser technique and larger vellum support adopted
by Cooper in some portraits during the final years of
his long career. In many ways, this marks a stylistic
return to the portraits of his early years (see, for
example, cat. 2 and cat. 8). Although Cooper was still
producing highly finished works at this stage, he was
also responding to demands from his clients for a more
‘freehand’ technique, in which his artistic dexterity
was exploited to its full potential. The clearest example
of this can be seen in his large portrait of Cosimo III,
from 1669 (see fig.34 cat. 58).
er
and attrib. J. Huysmans, c.1665–1670 (Warwick Castle).
2 In his portrait in the National Portrait Gallery, London, (NPG.804) Rochester
is famously portrayed in orange silks, feeding his pet monkey.
143
Cat.55
Samuel Cooper
Portrait of a Gentleman, Probably Henry Jermyn, Baron Dover,
3rd Baron Dover (1636–1708), 1667
Signed with conjoined monogram and dated,
‘SC/ 1667’
Later gold frame with pierced spiral cresting, the
reverse engraved ‘Henry Jermyn/ Lord Dover/ by Saml
Cooper/ 1667’
Provenance
Bentinck Hawkins Collection, 1894 [WA1897.36].
Lent by the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford University
(Min.12)
The identity of this sitter has been uncertain for some
time.1 In 1997, Richard Walker2 suggested that the
sitter was a member of the Knight of the Bath, based
on the crimson sash seen worn across his armour. On
this basis, he dismissed the possibility of the sitter as
‘Lord Dover’ (as inscribed on the reverse of the frame),
144
who was never awarded this distinction. A crimson
sash, usually worn across the body and tied at the
waist, was also worn during this period by soldiers as
a decorative element of their dress (see, for example,
Lely’s ‘Flagmen of Lowestoft’ portrait series of the
mid-1660s) and does not necessarily denote that the
wearer was a Knight of the Bath.
The engraving on the reverse of the frame
identifying the sitter as Henry Jermyn, 3rd Baron
Dover, therefore requires further consideration with
regard to the sitter. Certainly, Dover’s dates would fit
with the 1667 date of this miniature, making him 31
years of age. By 1667 he had worked in the household
of James, Duke of York for just over ten years,
becoming James’s Master of the Horse in 1659. At
Ickworth (National Trust acc. No. 851811), a painting
by an unknown hand depicts Jermyn in this role (fig.
33).The facial resemblance between this portrait
and Cooper’s is striking, with both men sporting the
same distinctive dark eyebrows in contrast to a light-
(Fig. 33) Unknown artist, Henry Jermyn, Baron Dover,
23rd Baron Jermyn. Dover wears the crimson sash worn by
military men of the period, mistaken in his miniature for
the ribbon of the Knight of the Bath.
coloured wig.3
Cooper may have been introduced to the sitter
through his connections with the oil painter Sir Peter
Lely. Lely had painted Jermyn’s close friend Charles
Berkeley, 1st Earl of Falmouth in a similar pose just
before his death in battle in 1665, with the same
composition of drapery background revealing a distant
landscape.4 Cooper’s compelling portrait of 1667,
painted during the last five years of his life, reveals his
sustained potency as an artist.
Jermyn was not made Baron Dover until 1685,
therefore the inscription ‘Lord Dover’ on the reverse
of this (later) frame was probably made after his death.
1 It was included as ‘an unknown man’ in Daphne Foskett, Samuel Cooper and
his contemporaries, exh. cat., National Portrait Gallery (London, 1974),
no.120. Also published in J.J. Foster, Samuel Cooper and the English Miniature
Painters of the XVIIth Century, 2 vols., (London, 1914–16), vol. 2, p. 35;
Basil Long, British Miniaturists, London, 1929, p. 89 (as ‘very good’); G.C.
Williamson, The History of Portrait Miniatures (London, 1904),
pl. XXIV.1, p. 75.
2 Richard Walker, Miniatures (Ashmolean Handbooks), (Oxford, 1997), no. 12,
p. 20, where the portrait is catalogued as ‘Man in armour’.
3 With thanks to Peter Moore who discovered the portrait at Ickworth
of Jermyn.
4 Sold Sotheby’s, London, 5th June 2008, lot 17.
er
145
Cat.56
Samuel Cooper
Portrait of Lady Amelia Anne Sophia Stanley, Countess of Atholl (d.1702/3), 1667
Signed with interlaced initials ‘SC’ and dated ‘1667’
Provenance
By descent at Blair Castle, Perthshire.
Lent by the Blair Castle Charitable Trust
This portrait is a good example of Cooper’s ability to
endow a sitter with such a powerfully direct gaze and
hauteur that it almost makes the viewer feel intrusive,
and is one of his more dramatic portraits of women
at the Restoration court. The colours, in particular
the vibrant red of the countess’s dress, have survived
largely unfaded. The style in which the countess wears
her hair, so-called ‘Braganza curls’ was fashionable
146
during the 1660s and is a key element to the success of
the composition as a whole and in projecting her image
as a lady of up-to-the-minute taste. The bunches of
projecting curls were in fact supported by wiring.
Probably born around 1640, Lady Amelia Anne
Sophia Stanley was the daughter of the 7th Earl of
Derby. Both her parents had their portraits painted
by Van Dyck. Lady Amelia married John Murray, 2nd
Earl of Atholl in 1659, who was by all accounts not a
pleasant man, but held high office in Scotland from
1660, including Justice General between 1661 and
1665. In 1676 he became 1st Marquess of Atholl, Lady
Amelia Stanley had her portrait painted by Sir Peter
Lely (Lansdowne Collection, in 1955), John Michael
Wright (Blair Castle) and Mary Beale (Knowsley Hall).
rc
147
Cat.57
Samuel Cooper, finished by another hand, probably Susannah-Penelope Rosse (c.1655–1700)
Portrait of Henry Bennet, 1st Earl of Arlington, KG, (1618–85), c.1668 and after 1674
Watercolour on vellum laid down on card,
extended at lower edge
Provenance
Possibly by descent from the sitter, to Lady Cecilia
FitzRoy, daughter of the 8th Duke of Grafton, who
married Baron Howard of Henderskelfe (1920–84);
Thence by descent at Castle Howard, North Yorkshire.
Lent by the Castle Howard Collection and the Hon.
Simon Howard
One of Samuel Cooper’s largest limnings, this is quite
likely to be the portrait of ‘my Lord Arlington’ which
so impressed Pepys when he visited Cooper’s studio
on 30th March 1668 that he resolved to have his wife
painted by the artist. If so, however, then the miniature
Pepys saw would have looked very different to that on
display here, for only the head is by Cooper.
148
The portrait was originally of rectangular shape, and
slightly smaller. Later, the corners were rounded-off
and the lower edge extended to accommodate the later
addition of the sitter’s costume, the robes and insignia
of the Order of the Garter, to which Arlington was
appointed in 1674. Cooper, of course, died in 1672.
Whilst the head, wig and lace collar are unquestionably
an example of Cooper’s mature style, the rest of the
composition is less confident, although competently
executed. When Cooper left it, the portrait was
probably similar to the five large, earlier unfinished
heads in the Royal Collection (for example, cat. 52),
which were also originally rectangular at 210 x 169 mm
(8 ¼ x 6 5/8 in.). However, Cooper may have intended
to produce a fully finished large-scale miniature similar
to his large miniature of the 1st Earl of Shaftesbury
(Shaftesbury Collection),1 which Pepys also saw on his
visit to Cooper’s studio in 1668.
Daphne Foskett2 first suggested that SusannahPenelope Rosse may have been responsible for the
149
costume. She was a near-neighbour of Cooper in
Covent Garden and is also known to have copied
a ‘large head’ of Lord Arlington by Cooper, a copy
which was later sold at auction by her husband
Michael Rosse in 1723.3
Henry Bennet, 1st Earl of Arlington, was the
father-in-law of Charles II’s illegitimate son by Barbara
Villiers, Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Grafton. A favourite of
the king, he was one of the ‘Cabal’, an acronym of the
names Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley and
Lauderdale, who all had a strong influence on the king.
He received the distinctive wound on the bridge of his
nose, shown clearly in Cooper’s miniature, during a
Civil War skirmish at Andover in 1644. Rather than try
to hide the wound, Arlington emphasised it with black
plaster and it became his defining physical feature.
One of his more unusual duties was the procurement
and management of the royal mistresses, at which he
was reputed to have been very successful.
rc Cat.58
After Samuel Cooper
Portrait of Cosimo III de’ Medici (1642–1723), later 17th century
Octagonal, 171 x 119 mm (6 ¾ x 4 11/16 in.)
1 Repr. in, Daphne Foskett, Samuel Cooper and his contemporaries, exh. cat.,
National Portrait Gallery (London, 1974), no. 127, p. 60.
2 Daphne Foskett, Samuel Cooper (1609–1672), (London, 1974), p. 91, pl. 74.
150
3 Ibid., reproducing the ‘Catalogue of the Collection of Mr. Michael Rosse’,
1723, no. 281.
This is a good copy, probably painted in Italy in the
later 17th century, of one of Cooper’s largest and most
celebrated portraits, that of Cosimo III de’ Medici.
It is from Cosimo III that we have the description of
Cooper as ‘a tiny man, all wit and courtesy, as well
housed as Lely, with his table covered with velvet’.1
Unfortunately, the original (Uffizi Gallery in Florence,
fig. 34) was not available for loan. Long thought to be
lost, it was discovered by a surprised Sir Oliver Millar
‘standing on a shelf in the office of the Director of the
Gabinetto dei Desegni in the Uffizi’ in 1965.
Cosimo’s interest in Cooper’s work, and the records
of his attempts to buy items from Cooper’s collection
of unfinished portraits, provide us with one of the
most detailed records of Cooper’s oeuvre.2 Before
he became Grand Duke of Tuscany, Cosimo came to
London in 1669, and the official record of Coimo’s trip
records that:
A certain artist, named Cooper, had been strongly
151
recommended to his highness for his skill in
painting and his excellence in drawing to the life,
with softness, expression, and distinctness. The
same is one of the most celebrated and esteemed
painters in London, and no person of quality visits
that city without endeavouring to obtain some of
his performances, to take out of the kingdom. He
[Cosimo] resolved, therefore, to have his likeness
taken by him; and for the purpose went on the first
of June, with [Colonel Sir Bernard] Gascoyne and
Castiglioni, to the place where he worked. There he
amused himself for a considerable time, till the first
draught was begun, and then returned home […]3
Cosimo ‘visited the painter who was employed upon
his portrait’ on 3rd June, shortly before midday, but
no other sitting is recorded. By December 1670, long
after Cosimo had left England on 11th June 1669, the
finished portrait (or ritrattino) had arrived in Florence,
having cost the enormous sum of £150. The armour
seen here is the same as that in Cooper’s much earlier
portrait of Charles II (see under cat. 44), and it is
likely that the artist used some form of studio prop to
complete Cosimo’s miniature long after returned
to Italy.
Cooper’s Cosimo is probably the most spatially
ambitious of all his portraits. As many of the exhibits
in this exhibition demonstrate, Cooper was unrivalled
in his depictions of a lifelike head, but when it came
to broader compositions, costume and background he
seems to have been happy either to ignore them or to
limit himself to relying on a previously used format,
even often relying on the work of Van Dyck down to
the smallest detail. While it is surprising that Cooper
never ventured into whole length or group portraiture,
the portrait of Cosimo III shows that Cooper was more
than capable of giving his sitters a comfortable sense
of space and movement within a natural setting, a
sense of depth and perspective that is the hallmark of
any decent portraitist. The fact that Cooper regularly
chose not to introduce the sort of details we see in
the portrait of Cosimo – the accomplished landscape
background, a well-rendered hand and baton reaching
out of the picture plane towards the viewer, and a
feeling of looking up at an imposing sitter (none of
which are quite so successfully conveyed in the copy)
– probably tells us more about his business practice
than his artistic one. Cooper was evidently able to
charge a high fee for regularly turning out finely
crafted heads on simple, less than half-length bodies,
and he doubtless saw little reason to spend
unnecessary time on anything else, if it meant turning
away paying sitters.4
bg
(Fig. 34) Samuel Cooper, Portrait of Cosimo de’ Medici. Cooper rarely worked on a large
scale, but as this portrait shows he was more than capable of doing so.
2 Ibid., pp. 63–6.
3 Travels of Cosmo the Third, Grand Duke of Tuscany, through England during
the Reign of King Charles the Second (1669), (London, 1821), p. 343.
152
4 A copy by Susannah-Penelope Rosse incorporates a much simpler armour
in half-length. Collection of the late Mrs T. S. Eliot, Christie’s, London,
20th November 2013, lot 181.
153
Cat.59
Cat.59a
Anglo-Dutch School after Samuel Cooper
Portrait of Nell Gwyn (1650–87), early 1670s
Oil on panel
165 x 210 mm (6 ½ x 8 ¼ in.)
Provenance
The collection of the Dukes of St Albans,
and by descent; With Philip Mould & Co. 2011;
Private Collection.
This rare depiction of Nell Gwyn is an early copy, at
least in the head, of a lost portrait of Charles II’s most
famous mistress by Cooper. Cooper’s miniatures of
Gwyn must be some of his most missed lost works,
along with his portraits of Lely and Pepys’ wife. The
likeness here was probably Cooper’s first portraitof
Gwyn, and therefore predates thattentatively identified
as her on display here, cat. 61. The head type seen in
the present portrait is referred to in the early 1670s
as being by both Cooper and Lely, and although
154
there must remain some uncertainty over who took
the initial portrait of Gwyn (not least because Lely’s
original is also lost), it seems likely that, as with his
portraits of Cromwell (and probably other sitters), it
was Cooper to whom a life sitting was given, which was
subsequently used by Lely.
Two early engravings by the Dutch engraver Gerard
Valck (who came to England in 1672, the year of
Cooper’s death) relate to the present likeness of Gwyn.
Both show her with the same hairstyle, simple shift top
and exposed breast, but the larger, which is recorded
as ‘P.Lely Pinxit’, shows her in a landscape setting
seated beside a lamb. The smaller print, an example
of which is on display here (cat. 59a), shows only the
head and shoulders, and is labelled by Valck ‘S. Couper
pinx’. The engraving after Cooper includes the jewelled
band across the shoulder seen in the present portrait.
The captivating later copy by Gervase Spencer also
on display here (cat. 60) seems to follow a Cooper-ish
technique in the face.
155
Can we be certain, though, which portrait came
first, Lely’s or Cooper’s? For what it is worth, Valck’s
engraving after Cooper appears to convey a more
spontaneous and lifelike portrait than his copy of the
Lely, and we are again left with the suspicion that it is
possible to get from Cooper’s portrait to Lely’s, but
not vice versa. It is most likely that Lely took Cooper’s
head and shoulders portrait, and simply inserted it
into one of his ready-made landscape settings, for the
same composition exists (though without the exposed
breast) for other sitters by Lely. The possible newly
discovered portrait of Gwyn by Cooper (cat. 61) may
be evidence of another meeting between artist and
sitter, and thus further evidence that Cooper was seen
as the first choice portraitist at court.
While the artist of the present miniature is
unknown, its technique is strongly reminiscent of
the highly finished small Dutch oils popular at the
time on the continent. It is likely that the painting
was made by a Dutch associate of Valck’s, perhaps
even in Antwerp, based on Valck’s engraving. The
wider composition, however, differs dramatically
from the sedate landscape background chosen for
Gwyn by Lely, and here we can see one of the most
daringly satirical paintings of the Restoration period,
as a number of references in the portrait make clear.
Most obviously perhaps, Gwyn is shown washing
sausages, an obvious and long-used sexual allusion,
while her portrayal in virginal white would have been
recognisable to contemporary viewers as a humorous
view of her ‘purity’. The sumptuous setting of the
portrait, with a Turkey carpet, silver salvers, elaborate
columns and a black servant doubtless allude to the
exalted position given to this otherwise un-exalted
sitter by Charles II and his court. It is even possible
that the black servant might be intended as an allusion
to the king, given his often remarked upon dark
complexion. When he was born, for example, Charles’s
mother Henrietta Maria wrote to her sister-in-law
joking that she had given birth to a black baby, while to
a friend in France she wrote that Charles was ‘so dark
that she was ashamed of him’. During the Civil War,
Parliamentary ‘wanted’ posters offered a reward for
Charles’s capture, describing him as a ‘tall, black man’,
while later, in the anti-Popish plotting of the 1670s (at
about the time this picture was painted) rumours were
circulated that the king was in fact the illegitimate son
of a ‘black Scotsman’, and he was often referred to as
the ‘black bastard’.1 It is not impossible, therefore, that
the black servant in the present portrait is meant to
be an allusion to Nell’s control over Charles, and his
infatuation with her.
Nell’s iconography is notoriously confused. Her
increasing fame, particularly in the 18th and 19th
centuries, often saw portraits of innocent ancestresses
transformed, merely with a new label, into the
most famous mistress in British history. In reality,
however, there were relatively few portraits of Gwyn
painted during her lifetime. Her fame as an untitled
courtesan of lowly status did not translate amongst
her contemporaries into a desire to hang her portrait
on their walls. There were, for example, no portraits
of Gwyn in Lely’s posthumous studio sale – but
there were 13 of Charles II’s nobler mistress, Barbara
Villiers, Duchess of Cleveland.
bg
Cat.60
Gervase Spencer (d.1763), after Samuel Cooper
Portrait Miniature of Nell (Eleanor) Gwyn (1650–87), mid-18th century
Watercolour on ivory
Inscribed verso, ‘Nell Gwyn/ by/ Spencer’ and in
another hand inventory number ‘1277’
Provenance
Private collection; Thence by descent; With Philip
Mould & Company, 2012; Private Collection.
This portrait by Spencer almost certainly records a
lost miniature by Cooper. The work displays a more
imaginative sense of invention seen in the exposed
breasts, perhaps reflective of the 18th century attitude
towards women. Exposed breasts have long been a
symbol of ‘mistress’ status, but whereas artists such
as Sir Peter Lely were more restrained, most often
simply showing one exposed nipple, Spencer showed
Gwyn naked to the waist. We can assume therefore
that Spencer was attempting not simply to imitate, but
re-create the well-known portrait of Nell, appealing to
the increasing appetite for sexually charged imagery
in mid-18th century England. The bawdy morals of
late Stuart/early Georgian England are reflected in
the engravings of William Hogarth such as A Harlot’s
Progress which comments on the repressed attitude
towards women.
Although self-taught, Spencer’s work caught the
eye of George Vertue. He described him in 1740 as
‘a young man […] who […] a few years ago was in
the capacity of a footman to Dr. W[…] – and now
professes liming with some success […] in a curious
neat manner and masterly’.1
er
1 Lady Antonia Fraser, King Charles II (London, 1979), pp. 9–10.
156
(Oxford, 1934), p. 151. He described him in 1740 as ‘a young man […] who
[…] a few years ago was in the capacity of a footman to Dr. W[…] – and now
professes liming with some success […] in a curious neat manner and masterly’.
157
Cat.61
Cat.62
Samuel Cooper
Portrait of a Lady, thought to be Eleanor ‘Nell’ Gwyn (1650–87), c.1670
Attributed to Susannah-Penelope Rosse (1655?–1700) after Samuel Cooper
Portrait of a Lady, thought to be Eleanor ‘Nell’ Gwyn (1650–87)
Signed with interlaced initials ‘SC’
Gilt metal frame inscribed
‘S. Cooper / Mrs Midleton (?)’
Watercolour on vellum putdown on a leaf from
a table-book
Inscribed in pencil on the reverse (see below)
Provenance
Part of the collection of miniatures at Madresfield
Court, Worcestershire, said to have been assembled
by Catharine Denn (d.1844), wife of William Lygon,
1st Earl Beauchamp; Thence by descent in the Lygon
Family at Madresfield Court.
Lent by The Elmley Foundation, Madresfield Court
Provenance
Miss Anne Beauclerk (1749–1809), greatgranddaughter of Charles II and Eleanor ‘Nell’ Gwyn;
Reverend Henry Beauclerk (1745–1817); John
Beauclerk (1772–1840); S.H.V. Hickson Esq., his sale,
Sotheby’s, London, 10th November 1969, lot 34, as
by Samuel Cooper, ‘Jane Myddleton by Samuel Cooper,
unfinished’; Christie’s, London, 15th June 1982, lot
74, as by S.P. Rosse, ‘Jane Myddleton’; Dr William
Lindsay Gordon’s sale, Christie’s, London, 29th March
2009, lot 79, unattributed, ‘Jane Myddleton’; Private
Collection.
158
The rarely published1 cat. 61 is one of Samuel Cooper’s
more unusual images of a female sitter, not least
because of its costume. Since the late 19th century,
the sitter has been regularly identified and exhibited2
as the Restoration court beauty Jane Myddelton (née
Needham), despite the evident uncertainty over such
an identification indicated by the prominent question
mark on the frame. In fact, the Myddelton identity can
be safely ruled out, and here we suggest instead that
the miniature may show in fact King Charles II’s most
famous mistress, Nell Gwyn.
The miniature was identified as Nell Gwyn in
two separate sources in the 18th century. The first is
a little-known 1753 engraving by Gervase Spencer
(fig. 35), which is a somewhat spontaneous rendering
but records the same pose and headdress seen in
the present miniature. Spencer, as noted in cat. 60,
recorded another, earlier and more certain portrait
of Gwyn by Cooper, and can perhaps be judged
as a reasonably reliable guide to her likeness. The
159
second source is an inscription on the back of a copy
of Cooper’s miniature (cat. 62), here attributed to
Susannah-Penelope Rosse, which states:
This picture of / Mrs Eleanor Gwynn / by S.
Cooper, was given to / Miss Anne Beauclerk by
J.R. / with a desire that it might go / in the family
to the Rev.d Mr. / Beauclerk her brother, if he
has / any heir male, but if not, then / Miss Anne
Beauclerk will / dispose of it, to whom she / thinks
worthy of it. / May 1770.
The provenance of the Rosse copy, coming from
Nell’s descendants in the Beauclerk family, adds weight
to the identification. That said, Gwyn’s iconography
has become hopelessly muddled over the years, thanks
to the widespread practice of renaming any portrait
of a Caroline ‘beauty’ as ‘Nell Gwynn’ from the 18th
century onwards, and consequently any identification
without a secure 17th century source must remain
to some degree a speculation. The likeness is,
nonetheless, comparable with what we know of
Cooper’s other portrait of Gwyn.
One further clue may also point to Nell Gwyn as the
sitter here: this portrait seems to be unique amongst
Cooper’s surviving work in depicting the sitter wearing
a gown and headdress of pure white, made in costly
white damask, fur and lace. This rather sophisticated
and unusually demure costume is quite unlike the
billowing and brilliantly coloured gowns that would
have been the choice of most of Cooper’s clients and
women of the court, and it has been suggested by
Aileen Ribeiro that in fact the costume was a type worn
by women who were new mothers. This would seem
a revealing explanation given the date, on stylistic
evidence, of the present miniature to around 1670, for
Gwyn gave birth to her two sons by Charles II in
quick succession in May 1670 and December 1671, at
which time she was at the height of her relationship
with the king and being ‘maintained at a vast expence’3
in Pall Mall.
If the portrait does show Gwyn, we need hardly
be surprised that she sat for Cooper twice, first, if
the copy of cat. 59 is a reliable guide, in the bare
breasted role of a mistress, and then again showing
the inevitable consequences of such an occupation. In
sitting for this second portrait, Nell perhaps wanted to
project herself in a more respectable light as befitting
the mother of two of the king’s sons, and it can be
said that her face appears to exude a quiet tenderness.
Furthermore, the cherubic features here seem to fit
the contemporary description of her ‘… everything
about her was charmingly rounded, including her
plump cheeks, where two dimples appeared when
she smiled’.8
rc
(Fig. 35) Gervase Spencer, after Cooper, Portrait of Nell Gwyn.
2 Arts Council of Great Britain, Edinburgh, ‘Exhibition of British Portrait
Miniatures’, 1965, no. 91; National Portrait Gallery ‘The Masque of Beauty’,
1972, no. 53; Daphne Foskett, Samuel Cooper and his contemporaries, exh. cat.,
160
National Portrait Gallery (London, 1974), no. 94.
3 Lewis Melville, The Windsor Beauties: Ladies of the Court of Charles II (Ann
Arbor, 2005), p. 202.
4 Lady Antonia Fraser, Charles II, His Life and Times (London, 1993), p. 171.
161
Cat.63
the miniaturist, ‘bought once a picture at a broker’s at
a very small price, & sold it to the Duke of Devonshire
for £500’.4
To follow Cooper as the king’s Limner at such
a young age was quite an achievement. As John
Murdoch has pointed out, there were perhaps
stronger candidates in both Richard Gibson (cat. 37)
and Peter Cross (c.1645–1724). In the aftermath of
Cooper’s death, perhaps it was seen as fitting to engage
his young prodigy and hope to continue the line of
brilliance that the court had enjoyed for over ten years.
Dixon’s career, however, was not to follow that of
his master. Whereas Cooper had enjoyed a virtually
unbroken line of patronage into old age, Dixon was
beset by misfortune. In 1678, after only five years, he
handed over the post of king’s limner to Peter Cross.
To Vertue, his technique after this date shows a loss of
capacity and a weakening in his skills.5
Dixon was clearly looking to other means of
financial gain in the mid-1680s when he organised a
lottery of his limnings; this he attempted again in 1694
from Bedford Gate and then finally in 1699 when he
launched ‘The Hopeful Advernture (sic)’ from his
home in St Martin’s Lane.6 The final scheme failed and
70 of the limnings were mortgaged to John Holles,
Duke of Newcastle. Thirty of these remain in the
collection at Welbeck today. Dixon died a poor man;
Vertue notes him living his final years ‘at last in the
King’s Bench Walk, Temple, at that time to prevent
prosecutions’.7
1 Walpole calls him ‘John Dixon’, assuming him to be a pupil of Lely and
painter ‘in crayon’ of the same name (this follows Vertue, British Library,
Add. 23070, f.62b, written c.1728–9).
2 Mary Edmond and John Murdoch, ‘Nicholas Dixon, Limner: And Matthew
Dixon, Painter, Died 1710’, in The Burlington Magazine, vol. 125, no. 967
(Oct. 1983), p. 611.
3 Richard. W. Goulding, ‘Nicholas Dixon, the Limner’, The Burlington
Magazine, vol. 20, no. 103 (Oct., 1911), p. 24.
(Oxford, 1936), p. 193.
5 Mary Edmond and John Murdoch, ‘Nicholas Dixon, Limner: And Matthew
Dixon, Painter, Died 1710’, in The Burlington Magazine, vol. 125, no. 967
(Oct., 1983), p. 611.
6 Online source; The Artworld in Britain 1660-1735, where the latter scheme is
noted as ‘The Hopeful Advernture’, not ‘Adventure’ as cited in the 2004
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry on Dixon.
The first scheme is noted in Daphne Foskett, A dictionary of British miniature
painters, 2 vols., (London, 1972), as found in ‘documents in Florence’ which
have not been traced by subsequent biographers.
(Oxford, 1936), p. 193.
er
Nicholas Dixon (b.c.1645–1708)
Portrait of an Unknown Lady, c.1675
Provenance
Mrs Christine Joan Villiers
Nicholas Dixon remains one of the more mysterious
artists from the circle of painters prevalent in Cooper’s
later career. The information relating to Dixon was
frequently confused, even by those who may have
known him. George Vertue’s notebooks often cite him
as ‘John Dixon’, a non-existent artist whose imagined
body of work was then mistakenly carried forward by
Horace Walpole.1 The indefatigable Mary Edmond
and John Murdoch followed the lead of Richard W.
Goulding in finally defining Dixon as ‘Nicholas’, an
artist who was in fact a brilliant pupil of Cooper, as the
technique in this miniature makes clear.2
162
Richard Goulding solved the mystery of Dixon’s
first name by linking a deed found in the archives
of Welbeck Abbey with Exchequer Accounts in the
Public Record Office. These showed that Nicholas
Dixon succeeded Cooper as king’s limner (miniculator
regis) upon the death of Cooper. Like Cooper, he was
to be paid £200 per annum.3
From this portrait, of an unknown lady of the
Restoration court, it is clear that Dixon’s style of
miniature painting fitted seamlessly into the sensuous
world of half-glances and artfully draped silks long
dominated by Peter Lely’s oil portraits. As Keeper of
the King’s Closet, Dixon also had access to the finest
Dutch and Italian art in the Royal Collection, which
clearly influenced his own painting. This he also had
in common with Lely, who by this date had amassed
a fine collection of his own old master paintings and
drawings. A glimpse of Dixon as an art dealer can be
found in Vertue’s notebooks, where he records that
163
Cat.64
Thamas Flatman (1635–88)
Portraits of Sir Henry Langley (d.1688) and Lady Langley
(née Elizabeth Hewet) (d.1702), early 1670s
Both watercolour on vellum
Both 60 mm (2 5/16 in.) high
Both signed with initials ‘TF’
Provenance
Hon. R.C. Herbert; V.M.E. Holt.
Thomas Flatman was one of the most fascinating,
highly intellectual personalities in the circle of
men surrounding Samuel Cooper. He was part of
a sophisticated literary elite who could include the
art of ‘limning’ as one of their gentlemanly pursuits,
although, for Flatman, his writing held central place in
his sphere of interests.1 His contemporaries, however,
noted his precocious artistic talent, with Bainbrigg
Buckeridge stating ‘perhaps limning was his greater
excellence’.2
Flatman was highly educated, entering Winchester
164
as a scholar in September 1649 and then New
College Oxford in 1654. He was called to the Bar in
1662, describing himself as ‘of London, a gent’. In
1668 he was made a member of the recently formed
Royal Society, from whose members Cooper drew
many patrons.3
There are enough connections between the two
men, aside from a geographical proximity, to assume
that they knew each well. The oil painter John Hayls,
Cooper’s ‘cozen’, was evidently a friend, painting
Flatman’s portrait (now only known from engravings);
Matthew Snelling, one of Cooper’s earliest patrons,
was also part of his set.4 These associations are
strengthened by Flatman’s own technique in miniature,
which uses Cooper’s red-brown hatching technique as
its basis and shows an acute level of observation of the
professional limner’s skill.
These portraits, said to be of Sir and Lady Langley
date to the early 1670s, and are particularly strong
within Flatman’s body of work.5 As an amateur artist,
most of his portraits are of family and friends but it has
not been possible to find a direct connection between
Langley and Flatman. Langley appears to have been a
cultured and learned man, whose library at Shrewsbury
Abbey was filled with ‘monastick’ books that had
survived Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries.6
There may, also, be an Oxford link in that Langley’s
first wife Jane was the daughter of William Strode, DD
er
1 One of Flatman’s verses was dedicated to Henry Capel(l), who died on
Christmas day 1656 and in whose memory he wrote ‘Affectuum decidua, or,
Due expressions in honour of the truly noble Charles Capell, Esq. (sonne to the
Right Honourable Arthur Ld. Capell, Baron of Hadham)’. Henry Capel’s
mother was painted by Cooper (cat. 15).
towards an English School (3rd edn of 1754; from 1969 Cornmarket facimile),
p. 372.
3 The Royal Society was founded in 1660, although as a group members had met
informally since the 1640s. It was originally formed to promote knowledge of
the natural world, gained through experiment and observation.
4 Matthew Snelling (1621–78) was also a Fellow of the Royal Society from 1665,
to which Charles Beale, elder and younger also belonged. Flatman is
documented in Charles Beale’s pocket book of 1672, where he comments on
a portrait taken from the ‘side’. Beale noted ‘this Mr. Flatman liked very well’
(Charles Beale, Pocket Book, 1672, with commentary by Richard Jeffree,
c.1975, National Portrait Gallery, Heinz Archive, Richard Jeffree papers,
drawer 2 folder 22; the pocket book transcript from George Vertue,
‘Notebook A.x’, c.1740, British Library: Add Ms 23072).
5 They were included in the ‘Special Exhibition of Portrait Miniatures’, South
Kensington Museum (V&A), 1865, nos. 2304–5, as well as Daphne Foskett,
Samuel Cooper and his contemporaries, exh. cat., National Portrait Gallery
(London, 1974), nos. 170 and 171. They were published in J.J. Foster, Samuel
Cooper and the English Miniature Painters of the XVIIth Century, 2 vols.,
(London, 1914–16), vol. 2, p. 110.
6 In Hugh Owen’s A History of Shrewsbury, vol. 2 (Shrewsbury, 1825),
p. 96, Langley is described as the first ‘lay proprietor’ of the Abbey. He is also
described as ‘eminent for both his erudition and lineage’.
(1601–45) of Christ Church, Oxford, the playwright
and poet, whose compositions Flatman would surely
have known.
Sir Henry Langley lived at Shrewsbury Abbey
and this pair of portraits probably commemorates
his second marriage, which took place in 1672, to
Elizabeth Hewet of Shire Oaks, Nottinghamshire.
165
Cat.65
Cat.66
Samuel Cooper
Portrait of a Gentleman, c.1670
Samuel Cooper
Portrait of an Unknown Lady, 1671
a table-book
Oval, 76mm (3 in.) high
Provenance
The Shaftesbury Collection of family miniatures at
St. Giles House, Dorset; Possibly sold to Samuel
Addington c.1860; Mrs P.B.K. Daingerfield,
Baltimore; Sotheby’s, London, 9th February 1961,
lot 28; Sotheby’s, London, 19th June 1967, lot 50 (to
Robertson); Sotheby’s, London, 18th December 1986,
lot 11; Christie’s, London, The Gordon Collection
of Portrait Miniatures, 20th November 2007, lot 20;
Private Collection.
The traditional identification of this late Cooper as
Thomas Wriothesley, 4th Earl of Southampton can be
discounted by a quick comparison with Southampton’s
other portraits. The provenance of the miniature, at St
Giles House in Dorset, seat of the Earls of Shaftesbury,
may suggest that the sitter is Anthony Ashley Cooper,
2nd Earl of Shaftesbury (1652–1699), whose age
would fit with the date of the portrait here. The 2nd
Earl’s iconography, however, is limited and somewhat
uncertain.
rc & bg
Signed with monogram and dated on recto at lower
left: ‘SC / 1671’
Scratched into the gilt-metal surface on verso of locket:
‘Charlotte de la Tremouille’
Provenance
Probably acquired by Walter Francis, 5th Duke of
Buccleuch or William, 6th Duke of Buccleuch (as a
portrait of ‘Charlotte de la Trémouille’); Thence by
family descent.
One of Cooper’s most uncompromising and frank
portrayals of a female sitter, this brilliantly realised
miniature was signed by him and dated 1671, the
year before the artist’s death. It is the last signed and
dated work by him to have survived. This work is firm
evidence that there was no decline in Cooper’s artistic
powers towards the end of his career. When it was
acquired most probably by the 5th Duke of Buccleuch,
on account of the sitter’s plain looks this work was
thought to represent the redoubtable Royalist heroine,
Charlotte de la Trémoille (1599–1664), who married
James Stanley, 7th Earl of Derby. Her name has been
scratched erroneously into the gilt-metal back of the
locket. The identity of the sitter has been tentatively
suggested as Margaret Leslie, Lady Balgonie (d. 1668),
later Countess of Buccleuch, and by a third marriage,
Countess of Wemyss.
sl
166
167
Cat.67
Attributed to John Hoskins the younger (1630/40–1703 or later)1
Portrait of Samuel Cooper (1607/08–72), c.1660–65
Pastel on paper
244 x 194 mm (9 ½ x 7 5/8 in.)
Inscribed on label on reverse of frame (in the hand of
Horace Walpole) ‘Samuel Cooper the famous Painter
in miniature; the only known Portrait of him, from the
royal collection at Kensington Palace and given to Mr.
Dalton (at whose auction it was bought in 1791) by King
George 3. Hor. Walpole.’
And on another label in the hand of the Rev. Alexander
Dyce, ‘This is the portrait, which Walpole, in his
description of Cooper, mentions as being in Queen
Caroline’s closet at Kensington and said to be by Cooper
himself; but which Walpole supposes to be by Jackson, a
relative of Cooper. See Anecd. Of Painting in England,
vol. iii. 115, ed. 1782. A. Dyce.’
Provenance
Probably the portrait noted in Mrs. Samuel Cooper’s
will (Probate 11/415/1693), died 24th August 1693,
‘I give to my said cozon John Hoskins my husband’s
168
picture in crayons’; Probably sold by John Hoskins
the younger in an auction, which included ‘a choice
collection of limnings’, March 17032 (probably bought
Richard Graham); Richard Graham (c.1680–1741)
sold in his sale, 6th March 1711, lot 48, for 4£ 6s;
Henry Boyle, Baron Carleton (1669–1725); Thence
by descent to Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington
(1694–1753), nephew of Baron Carleton; George II
(where seen at Kensington Palace by George Vertue in
1739, and again in the ‘Queen’s closet’ at Kensington
in 1743); George III; Given by him to Richard Dalton,
his librarian; Richard Dalton’s sale, Christie’s, 9th April
1791 (as noted in the hand of Horace Walpole on the
reverse of the portrait’s frame), probably part of lot 66,
described as ‘Four large miniatures by Cooper’), sold
for £1.8 (buyer Godard); Horace Walpole; Sale of the
contents of Strawberry Hill, 25 April–23 June 1842,
18th day, lot 166, Bt. Strong, Bristol, £0.19.0; Rev.
Alexander Dyce; By whom bequeathed to the Victoria
and Albert Museum, London 1869.
169
(Fig. 36) Bernard Lens, Portrait of Samuel Cooper. One of
two copies of cat.67 painted by Lens, whose endorsement
of the identity provides compelling evidence that the sitter
is Cooper.
(Dyce. 91)
Recently considered to show an unknown man, this
simple crayon or pastel portrait can now be definitively
identified as a portrait of Cooper in his 50s. A fresh
examination of the portrait’s history not only allows
us to be certain of the identity of the sitter, but also
to suggest a convincing attribution for the artist,
Cooper’s relative John Hoskins the younger. The
likeness presents an interesting contrast with Cooper’s
Self-Portrait of 1645 (cat. 1); the dress is far simpler,
and there is no attempt to present the sitter as an
artist of any great repute. That the portrait is such an
unceremonious image may explain why its traditional
identity as Cooper had been questioned. Although the
attribution to Hoskins the younger is less certain, the
identity of the sitter has in fact been securely recorded
since at least the early 18th century. The portrait
can even, with some confidence, be traced back to
170
Cooper’s widow.
The picture’s history appears to begin in the will
of Christiana Cooper. In 1693 she bequeathed to ‘my
said cozon John Hoskins my husband’s picture in
crayons’, with this John Hoskins being John Hoskins
the younger. It is then first certainly recorded in the
collection of Richard Graham, the noted art expert,
author and collector, and we can be sure that by this
time it was accepted as a portrait of Cooper because
it is recorded as such in a miniature copy by Bernard
Lens III (fig. 36). Lens’s copy exists in more than one
version, but the back of a miniature formerly in the
Bristol Collection at Ickworth3 is inscribed on the
reverse:
‘done from ye Originall in Creons by himself in ye
collection of Mr. Graham.’
It is not certainly known how Graham acquired the
portrait, but he probably bought it at or via the sale
of John Hoskins junior held in Covent Garden on 6th
March 1703. Unfortunately, no sale catalogue exists of
the Hoskins sale, but an advert in the Daily Courant of
4th March 1703 tells us that it contained:
A Choice Collection of Limnings, by Mr. Cooper
and old Mr. Hoskins.
Lens’s inscription, and its reference to the collection
of ‘Mr. Graham’ must be dated to before 1711, when
the original portrait was sold by Graham. The auction
catalogue4 for Graham’s sale of 6th March 1711
includes, in a section listed as ‘Crayons’, lot 48, ‘Sam.
Cooper. His Own Head’. (It sold for 4£ 6s.) The Lens
miniature was later evidently seen in Lord Bristol’s
collection by Vertue, for in about 1721 he records
seeing: the head of S. Cooper limner done by Mr. Lens
after a crayon/ drawing by SC (sold in Mr. Grahams
sale) in posses of ld Bristol.
In a later annotation to the above entry in his
notebook Vertue wrote ‘B. Carleton’, referring to
the then owner of the crayon drawing, Henry Boyle,
1st Baron Carleton. Carleton presumably bought it
at Graham’s sale, but did not own it long, for after
his death in 1725 Vertue records that the crayon had
passed to Carleton’s nephew, Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl
of Burlington. Writing in 1727, Vertue provides us with
further compelling evidence for the sitter’s identity,
and is the first to record doubts that the portrait was
painted by Cooper himself:
the picture in crayons of S. Cooper limner. that
lately belonged to Ld Carlton. comeing to Ld
Burlington after his death he gave it to Mr Kent
Painter. Mrs. Pope mother to Mr. Alex. Pope was
Sister to Mrs. Cooper wife of the famous limner.
she well remembers this picture in Crayons, &
when it was done (not very like) not by Cooper
himself but by …Jackson who painted in that way
to the life. & was related to Cooper. & at his death
left to him many things of drawings unfinisht,
designs, pictures &c all papers written books of
accounts were left in poses of his Widow
The ‘Mr. Alex. Pope’ here is the poet Alexander
Pope, while ‘Mr Kent Painter’ is of course the
171
celebrated artist, architect and garden designer
William Kent. The relationship between Pope, Kent
and Lord Burlington was by this time already close
– Pope’s garden at Twickenham (near Burlington’s
Chiswick villa), for example, was designed by Kent
– and there seems no reason to doubt Vertue’s tale
of Kent being given a portrait of Cooper (whether
permanently or temporarily) by his patron Lord
Burlington, perhaps in order to discuss it with Pope’s
mother, Edith Pope (née Turner, 1642–1733), who as
Vertue relates was Cooper’s sister-in-law. Although
Edith did not move to London until after Cooper’s
death, she would have surely met her brother-in-law
numerous times.5 Her comment that the drawing
was ‘not very like’ not only implies that she knew the
features of her brother-in-law, and was able to be
objective when commenting on his portrait, but also
helps explain the fact that the crayon portrait has been
doubted to show a compelling match with the likeness
seen in Cooper’s Self-Portrait (cat.1) of some 20 years
earlier. Closer examination of the two portraits,
however, reveals similar features, such as the eyes, the
gently hooked nose and the unusual open mouth.
The portrait had entered the Royal Collection
by the end of the 1730s. Vertue records seeing
at Kensington Palace, in about 1739, ‘[Cooper]
some large limnings … his own head in crayons…’6
Although we cannot be sure how the portrait entered
the collection atKensington Palace, a number of routes
172
are possible. George II was resolutely uninterested in
art, but William Kent was frequently working both
for Queen Caroline and at Kensington Palace by this
time, and could have given or sold the portrait to the
royal family. Another possibility is that the portrait
was somehow acquired by Frederick, Prince of Wales,
a voracious collector who had begun to buy works
assiduously from about 1735, and for whom William
Kent also worked (and who, incidentally, went to
Pope’s villa at Twickenham in 1735). We know also
that Frederick collected works by Cooper,7 though
there is no reference to him buying the present portrait
of him. A final possible scenario is that the portrait
remained at Lord Carleton’s house after his death,
the misleadingly spelled Carlton House in London,
which was bequeathed to Lord Burlington but sold to
Frederick in 1732.
In 1743 Vertue again records the miniature at
Kensington Palace, and probably in the ‘the Queens
Closet’; ‘S Cooper the limners head in Crayons’. Later,
the brevity of Vertue’s references to the miniature in
the royal collection led Horace Walpole, who was
working from Vertue’s notebooks, to mistakenly
assume that Vertue believed not only that the portrait
at Kensington was by Cooper himself, but that it was
another version of the same likeness. In his publication
of Anecdotes of Painting in England (1762-80), which
was based on Vertue’s notebooks, Walpole writes the
following about the pastel:
It is an anecdote little known, I believe and too
trifling but for such a work as this, that Pope’s
mother was sister of Cooper’s wife. Lord Carleton
had a portrait of Cooper in crayons, which Mrs
Pope said was not very like, and which, descending
to Lord Burlington, was given by his Lordship to
Kent. It was painted by one Jackson, a relation of
Cooper, of whom I know nothing more, and who,
I suppose, drew another head of Cooper, in crayons,
in Queen Caroline’s closet, said to be painted by
himself; but I find no account of his essays in
that way.8
Any confusion was short-lived for Walpole,
however, for by the end of the 18th century he came
to own the portrait himself. Walpole records, on the
back of the frame seen on display here, that he bought
it after the posthumous sale (at Christie’s, 9th April
1791) of Richard Dalton, the art dealer who served as
art adviser and librarian to King George III:
Samuel Cooper the famous Painter in miniature;
the only known Portrait of him, from the royal
collection at Kensington Palace and given to Mr.
Dalton (at whose auction it was bought in 1791)
by King George 3. Hor. Walpole.
Presumably, Dalton was given the portrait by
George III, and it was part of lot 66, ‘Four Large
miniatures by Cooper’, recorded as being bought
by ‘Godard’.
Walpole also owned the drawn copy of the portrait
formerly belonging toVertue (fig. 37). The drawing is
inscribed ‘G.V.’ in pencil, and as follows:
The Famous Samuel Cooper Limner an
Englishman
of the most Eminent character
a limning by himself
also a Crayon by himself at
Kensington
The lower line of script is on a different piece
of paper, and may be in a different hand. If it is in
Walpole’s hand, then it evidently relates to his earlier
uncertainty about the presence of another version of
the portrait still in the Royal Collection.
The original crayon portrait was eventually sold
from Walpole’s collection in the famous auction at
Strawberry Hill. From there it passed to the Reverend
Alexander Dyce, who bequeathed it to the Victoria
and Albert Museum in London.
A fresh attribution of the crayon portrait, to John
Hoskins the younger, may also help confirm the
identity of the sitter. The assumed attribution, via
Vertue’s note above, to a mysterious artist named
‘Jackson’, of whom nothing and no work is known,
has long been a mystery. However, if one reinterprets
Vertue’s reference from ‘Jackson’ to ‘Jack’s son’ –
with ‘Jack’ referring to ‘John Hoskins the elder’, and
‘Jack’s son’ referring to ‘John Hoskins the younger’, all
appears to become clear; he is known to have worked
in crayon, and was originally bequeathed the portrait
173
by Cooper’s widow. It is tempting to think that she did
so knowing Hoskins to have painted it.
The reference to ‘Jackson’ comes from George
Vertue’s record of a conversation with the 84-year-old
Edith Pope, Samuel Cooper’s sister-in-law,10 which, in
the manner of its writing appears to record a dialogue
with Edith. It is not impossible, therefore, that Vertue
has written her observation apropos the artist ‘Jack’s
son’ as ‘Jackson’, as spoken by Edith. Only with
intimate knowledge of the Cooper/Hoskins family
would Vertue have been able to decipher her words as
‘Jack’s son’. References to both the elder and younger
John Hoskins’ as ‘Jack’ are noted in contemporary
sources, for example by Samuel Pepys.11 In the late
1970s Mary Edmond made the connection between
Vertue’s ‘Jackson’ and Hoskins the younger, supported
subsequently by John Murdoch in 1998.12
John Hoskins the younger was one of Cooper’s
closest relatives, as well as a friend and potentially his
artistic collaborator. In the flourishing studio based
in Blackfriars and later in Covent Garden,13 alongside
his older cousins, Hoskins the younger was trained by
his father in the art of limning. Their close personal
relationship is borne out by a number of documents,
including Samuel Cooper’s will, which Hoskins the
younger not only witnessed but also was named as the
first beneficiary. Later, Cooper’s widow maintains these
close links in her own will of 1693, in which Hoskins
the younger is named as legatee of the remains of her
late husband’s studio. This fact also corroborates with
Mrs Pope’s assertion that ‘Jackson’ (i.e. John Hoskins
the younger) was ‘at his [Samuel Cooper’s] death left
to him many things of drawings unfinisht, designs,
pictures &c all papers written books of accounts were
left in poses of his Widow [Christiana Cooper]’.
It is likely that the two artists recorded each
other’s features. Cooper appears to have reserved his
drawings principally for family and friends, rendered
in moments of leisure and subsequently a record
of fleeting moments or intensely private, emotional
observations.14 Evidence for this can be seen in two
drawings on the two sides of a single sheet of paper –
the obverse portrays a baby, its arms and hands laid on
a carefully smoothed sheet, unnaturally still in death;
the reverse shows a laughing young man, long accepted
as a portrait of Cooper’s ‘cousin Jacke’, caught in half
light, as though leaving for an evening in the tavern
(Private Collection).
There is increasing evidence, aside from his early
apprenticeship, to suggest that John Hoskins the
younger was a professional artist. John Murdoch
suggests that he should be viewed as a ‘gentleman’
artist, painting in his leisure time and only occasionally
on commission.15 New evidence would appear to
dispute this assumption, placing the younger Hoskins
as a career artist actively seeking work. In a record of
legal proceedings discovered by Mary Edmond, his
profession is described as ‘lymner or picture drawer’.16
Newspaper advertisements, which have only recently
come to light include Hoskins in a list of ‘Limners’,
then living in Long Acre, Covent Garden. There are
seven references to him as such in the publication
Collection for Improvement of Husbandry and Trade
between March and October 1695 alone.17 Finally,
John Aubrey (1626–97)18 noted Hoskins the younger
at work in the pastel medium seen here in Cooper’s
portrait, whilst at the house of the natural philosopher
Robert Hooke (1635–1703):
John Hoskyns, the painter, being at Freshwater, to
drawe pictures for … esqre, Mr. Hooke observed
what he did, and, thought he, ‘why cannot I doe so
too?’ So he gets him chalke, and ruddle, and coale
and grinds them, and putts them on a trencher, gott
a pencill, and to work he went, and made a picture:
then he copied … the pictures there, which he
made like.19
er & bg
(Fig. 37) After John Hoskins the younger, Portrait of Samuel Cooper.
174
175
1 Very little biographical information has come to light concerning John
Hoskins junior, son of John Hoskins the elder and therefore cousin of Samuel
Cooper. The Victoria and Albert Museum cite his birthdate as 1615–30, but it
is now believed to be closer to the latter.
2 Advertisement, Daily courant, 4th March 1703 (The Art world in Britain 1660
to 1735, available online at http://artworld.york.ac.uk).
3 Formerly in the collection at Ickworth but now untraced. The inscription is
recorded in R.W. Goulding, ‘The Welbeck Abbey Miniatures belonging to His
Grace the Duke of Portland’, in The Walpole Society, vol. 4, 1914–15 (Oxford,
1916) (another version of the Lens, also recorded by the artist as showing
Cooper, is still at Welbeck), p. 126.
4 The auction catalogue was headed: ‘A CATALOGUE Of extraordinary
Original PICTURES and LIMNINGS, By several excellent MASTERS;
Together with Some curious FIGURES in Brass, &c. To be sold by
AUCTION, on Thursday the 6th of March, 1711. at Mr.Pelitier’s, next House
to the Wheat-Sheaf, in Henrietta-Street, Covent-Garden: Where Catalogues
may be had; and the Pictures, &c. may be seen on Monday in the Afternoon,
and the two Days preceeding the SALE. To begin at Eleven a Clock precisely.’
5 There is, for example, evidence that the extended Cooper family, including
John Hoskins the younger, were in York, the Turners’ home town, in 1657/58
and it is probable that they visited on other occasions. See Mary Edmond
‘Samuel Cooper, Yorkshireman – and Recusant?’, in The Burlington Magazine,
vol. 127, no. 939 (Feb. 1985), pp. 83–5.
1936), p.160.
7 See Kimerly Rorschach, ‘Frederick, Prince of Wales (1707–51) as Collector
and Patron’, Walpole Society, vol. 55 (1989–90).
Horace Walpole, Anecdotes of Painting in England (1786 edition reprinted in
1871) edn.) p.255.
8 Which is inscribed ‘The Famous Samuel Cooper Limner. an Englishman/ of
the most Eminent character.’ Below this, on the right: ‘a limning by himself/
also a Crayon by himself at/ Kensington.’ Bottom left, in pencil, initials ‘G.V.’.
On reverse in pencil (not previously noted); ‘Samuel Cooper ? sui Effigiem
fecit/ ob anno 1672/ eta 63’. Rectangular, 156 x 118 mm (6 1/8 x 4 5/8 in.).
Provenance: George Vertue; Horace Walpole; Sale of the contents of
Strawberry Hill, 25th April–23rd June, 1842, ?11th day, lot 109: two
coloured drawings, a portrait of Samuel Cooper…and of Mason, bought Colonel
Cunningham; Bought by the Trustees, National Portrait Gallery, August
1936, as ‘a drawing by George Vertue of a self-portrait of Samuel Cooper’. The
attribution to Vertue is no longer accepted by the NPG.
9 As Katherine Coombs has pointed out to Emma Rutherford, this idiosyncratic
spelling and erratic punctuation are typical in Vertue’s transcriptions.
10 Samuel Pepys diary, for example, notes 19th July 1668, ‘Come Mr. Cooper,
176
Hales, Harris, Mr. Butler that wrote Hudibras, and Mr. Cooper’s cosen Jacke;
and by and by come Mr. Reeves and his wife, whom I never saw before. And
there we dined: a good dinner, and company that pleased me mightily, being
all eminent men in their way. Spent all the afternoon in talk and mirth, and in
the evening parted.’
11 Mary Edmond., ‘Limners and Picturemakers’, in The Walpole Society, vol.4 7
(1978–80), p. 112, and John Murdoch, Seventeenth-century English Miniatures
in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, (London, 1997), p. 144. In
1998, Christopher Lloyd was still musing over the problematic ‘Jackson’ as the
author of this portrait, the year after John Murdoch’s book on the seventeenthcentury miniatures in the Victoria and Albert Museum suggested Hoskins the
younger as the artist in a footnote (Christopher Lloyd and Vanessa Remington,
Masterpieces in Little [London, 1998], p.110). Daphne Foskett, who accepted
the identification as Cooper, noted in Samuel Cooper and his contemporaries,
exh. cat., National Portrait Gallery (London, 1974),: ‘According to Walpole
it was drawn by Jackson, a relative of Cooper, about whom nothing is known’,
no. 2, p. 3. John Murdoch revisited the issue of ‘Jackson’ in his entry on
Samuel Cooper in the ODNB in 2004, stating that the pastel discussed here;
‘is probably not by Cooper but may be a portrait of him in the late 1650s by
his cousin ‘Jack’s son’, the younger Hoskins.’
12 From 1634, possibly earlier, Hoskins was based in Bedford Street,
Covent Garden.
13 Only a handful of sketches in chalk by Cooper survive. See Lindsay Stainton,
Drawing in England from Hilliard to Hogarth, (London, 1987), pp. 110–16.
14 John Murdoch, Seventeenth Century Portrait Miniatures in the collection of the
Victoria and Albert Museum (London, 1997), p. 44.
15 Mary Edmond, ‘Samuel Cooper, Yorkshireman – and Recusant?’, in
The Burlington Magazine, vol. 127, no. 983 (Feb.1985), p. 84.
16 According to the art historian Peter Moore (personal communication), this
publication ‘included lists of incoming and outgoing shipping cargoes and
featured classified advertisements for a diverse range of professions, including
artists. Those wishing to advertise their services could “for small charge … be
thus inserted” into future lists.’
17 Aubrey was writing between 1669 and 1696.
18 Aubrey states that Hooke was taught by ‘Samuel Cowper’; presumably a
phonetic spelling of ‘Samuel Cooper’. The name of this artist has, however,
been noted literally by Hooke’s biographer, Patri J. Pugliese, in the 2004
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Aubrey’s further description of
‘Cowper’ ‘Prince of limners’ is manifest indication that he is referring
to Cooper.
19 Andrew Clark, ed., ‘John Aubrey’, ‘Brief Lives,’ Chiefly of Contemporaries,
set down by John Aubrey, between the Years 1669& 1696 (Oxford, 1898),
vol. 1, p. 409.
The Materials and Techniques
of Samuel Cooper
by alan derbyshire
amuel Cooper was a relatively prolific artist who
painted over a career spanning some 35 years. He
is thought to have been taught the art of miniature
painting by his uncle, John Hoskins, who in turn
was probably taught by the Elizabethan miniaturist,
Nicholas Hilliard.1 Apart from differences in style it is
interesting to consider the similarities and differences
in the materials and techniques of three such
important miniature painters, and how this affects the
appearance of Cooper’s works.
Our understanding of the materials and techniques
of artists who painted in the 16th and 17th centuries
has been gathered by various means. First and
foremost is observation of the miniatures themselves
using a relatively low-powered microscope. Secondly,
access to scientific analysis using a variety of methods,
for example, X-radiography and Raman spectroscopy.2
Thirdly, a knowledge of contemporary treatises by
miniaturists, such as ‘A Treatise Concerning the
Art of Limning’ written by Hilliard in about 1600,3
and the less well-known Miniatura, first written in
1627–8 by Edward Norgate.4 And finally the practical
reconstruction of various techniques. This holistic
approach5 has allowed us to put together an objective
view of how artists such as Hilliard and Cooper would
have painted their exquisite miniatures. Hilliard is
famous for his stylised, highly decorative approach
to miniature painting and in particular his inventions
concerning the painting of jewels. In contrast,
Cooper’s approach was far more naturalistic, not
only in the tone of his palette but also in his vigorous
capturing of likenesses and his reliance on painterly
effects rather than decorative ones.
From Norgate we have a contemporary
understanding of not only some of the materials that
both Cooper and Hilliard would have used but also
how many hours it would have taken to complete a
portrait miniature. Norgate suggests there would have
been three sittings, with each one lasting between
178
two and four hours.6 Norgate also describes the kind
of brush or ‘pencil’ that one should use. The brushes
should be ‘cleane and sharp pointed … reasonable
length full round and sharpe, and not too longe, nor
too slender …’.7 Essentially he describes a brush that
has a fine point for precision but that has sufficient
body to carry enough watercolour to make a flowing
stroke. It is a common myth that miniatures must be
painted with a brush with a single hair – this simply
would not function.
A selection of pigments would also be necessary of
course and both Hilliard in his treatise and Norgate
describe in some detail the range of pigments that are
recommended and – importantly – how to work them
into paint with gum Arabic. Some pigments were to
be ground to a fine powder while others should only
be washed – ‘some … colours are of soe loose and
Sandy a quality, as they never need to be ground …
but refined by washing’.8 Again this is an accurate
assessment. For example azurite (or blue bice as it
was known) quickly becomes paler and paler if it is
ground to a particle size that is small enough to work
as a pigment. Therefore azurite needs to be washed to
separate out only the deepest-coloured particles that
do not need grinding. Recent, albeit limited, Raman
analysis of some miniatures by Cooper, here at the
V&A has confirmed the presence of a range of the
traditional, late 16th- and early 17th-century pigments
e.g. lead white, red lead, massicot, carbon black and
indigo.9 By the time Cooper was painting in the mid1600s it was, however, fashionable to use more natural,
sombre colours. The pure, bright blue backgrounds or
red curtain backgrounds of the late 16th century were
no longer in use. To obtain those natural tones, Cooper
also added white pigment to his browns and blues etc.
Essentially Cooper was working with what today we
would call ‘gouache’. As well as being duller in tone,
the addition of white also added opacity to his colours.
This is quite different to the technique of the 16th-
century miniaturists, such as Hilliard. While Hilliard
also used some opaque areas of colour – particularly
in the backgrounds and costumes – the opacity was
created by using a large proportion of pigment to the
gum Arabic binder. The result was opacity but with
a retention of the purity of colour. Today the correct
term for this type of opaque watercolour – without
added white – is bodycolour.10
One of the other main differences in use of materials
between Cooper and the artists who came before him
was the painting support or ‘tablet’. Cooper’s supports
generally consisted of vellum adhered to a tablebook
leaf, as opposed to the vellum adhered to pasteboard
or playing card used by Hilliard. Tablebook leaves
were made, probably for merchants, as a convenient
portable writing support for use with metalpoint.
They consist of a core piece of vellum, on either side
of which a smooth coating of gesso has been applied.
They were white and larger than playing cards and
therefore provided an attractive alternative for artists
to stick their vellum to when making a tablet/support
for miniatures. The earliest known use of tablebook
leaf is seen in a miniature by Balthazar Gerbier, c.1616,
of Charles I as perhaps Prince of Wales.11 Cooper
seems always to have used a tablebook leaf – I am not
aware of any un-restored, signed Coopers that are not
on a tablebook leaf.
Although a different support was being used, the
first part of the process of painting a miniature was
essentially the same for Cooper and Hilliard. This
involved the laying down of a carnation layer onto the
vellum. The carnation layer – so-called because of its
colour – was a mixture of various pigments that was
applied to the vellum to give a smooth, flesh-coloured
ground on which to paint the face. Norgate suggests
that artists such as Hilliard and Oliver would have
had several tablets already prepared with carnations
of different tones – ‘the best course … according as
Mr. Hilliard and … Mr Isaac Oliver … was to have
(Fig. 38) Nicholas Hilliard, Portrait of
Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester (X-ray)
(Fig. 39) John Hoskins the elder, Portrait
of Catherine Howard (X-ray)
(Fig. 40) Samuel Cooper, Portrait of an
unknown man (unfinished) (X–ray)
179
… a dozen or more cards ready prepared’.12 The artist
would then choose one to match the complexion of
the sitter. Cooper would probably have done the same,
however, it is noticeable that Cooper’s miniatures
have relatively thick carnations. This is clearly visible
when comparing typical X-ray images of miniatures by
Hilliard, Hoskins and Cooper. See figs. 38 – 40.
The X-ray images of the miniatures by Hilliard
and Hoskins show as relatively dark areas where the
faces have been painted. We know from analysis that
these areas of the carnations are painted using mainly
lead white. However, in the case of both Hilliard
and Hoskins the carnations are so thin that there is
insufficient pigment to significantly stop the film from
being blackened when exposed to X-rays. Notice
how the more thickly painted jewels and ruff etc.,
show as white. By contrast, the face/carnation area
of the Cooper miniature shows as a patchy white on
the X-ray. This indicates that the carnation is both
more thickly and more roughly applied. An excellent
example of Cooper’s application of the carnation layer
can be seen in fig. 41. In this image of an unfinished
miniature An Unknown Woman by Cooper, the edge
of the carnation is clearly visible to the left of the face.
This thickly applied carnation combined with his
use of ‘gouache’ is one of the key differences in the
way Cooper painted compared to previous artists and
gives a particular quality to his miniatures. Cooper’s
technique manifests in a thicker, looser application
of paint even over the carnation ground, which, as a
result, is often hidden by the later touches. Cooper’s
technique is therefore often described as ‘painterly’ in
that the paint is more freely applied. Fig. 42 is a detail
of the face of Cooper’s miniature of Lady Carew from
180
the V&A’s collection. This raking light image shows the
relatively ‘rough’ surface achieved by Cooper.
In addition even when Cooper adds details with
hatches of colour he still tends to use quite broad
strokes of paint, which often leave a distinctive mark.
Fig. 43 shows examples of Cooper’s brushstrokes. The
characteristic long, quite broad, hatched lines – clearly
visible on the cheek, the nose and the hairline – finish
in a pool of colour where the brush momentarily stops
at the end of the stroke.
A more contemporary point of comparison to
Cooper is the work of Hoskins. Although Hoskins’s
early work shows the influence of Hilliard, his later
miniatures display a move to a more naturalistic
palette and a somewhat broader application of paint.
However, Hoskins’s brushwork remains finer than that
of Cooper’s and his application is less vigorous, less
painterly than Cooper’s. Consider figs.44 & 45 which
show details from miniatures by Hoskins and Cooper.
The brushstrokes on the Hoskins miniature are
shorter and finer than those on the Cooper miniature.
Cooper’s brushstrokes are stronger and more defined
– with deeper tones especially under the chin, at the
corners of the mouth and where the eyelids meet
the face. The overall effect is one of greater contrast
between areas of light and shade. It also suggests that
Cooper has actually used a wider brush in applying
the paint – even for such relatively fine details as the
painting of the facial features.
Another feature that characterises Cooper’s work
can be seen in the way he shadows. Hilliard is famously
contradictory about shadowing.13 Hilliard says that
shadowing is unnecessary in limning but then goes
on to discuss in some detail which pigments should
(Fig. 41) Samuel Cooper, Portrait of an
unknown woman (unfinished)
be used for shadowing. Essentially Hilliard suggests
that reds should be shadowed with deeper reds and
greens with deeper greens etc. Fig. 44 shows Cooper
used blue for shadowing in the face. Cooper’s use of
blue to shadow around the eyes, nose and lips is a quite
different approach to that of Hilliard. Interestingly
Hoskins also uses blue to shadow the facial features in
his later work (fig. 45).
This use of blue is also seen in the work of both
Cooper and Hoskins (later in his career) when painting
pearls (figs. 44 & 45). Both artists paint pearls using a
central raised blob of lead white with the outer ‘circle’
of the pearl being painted with a yellow/brown and the
inner ‘translucency’ with blue. This is very different
from the way Hilliard painted pearls using shell silver
and which he describes in detail in his treatise.14 In fact
(Fig. 42) Samuel Cooper, Portrait of
Lady Carew
(Fig. 43) Samuel Cooper, Portrait of an unknown man
(detail showing brushstrokes)
181
the use of shell gold and silver is far more restrained
in Cooper’s miniatures than those of Hilliard. Hilliard
not only painted with gold and silver when simulating
jewels but also for the occasional background and as
highlights on costume and armour. In contrast Cooper
rarely uses silver and gold and then normally to paint
discreet, specific items such as buttons and armour
studs and, on occasion, his monogram.
There are a significant number of Cooper
miniatures, which are variously described as unfinished
– such as those from the Cooper pocket book at the
V&A,15 or those described as sketches such as the
five large works by Cooper in the Royal Collection.16
There are others – perhaps the most famous being
the miniature of Oliver Cromwell in the Duke of
Buccleuch’s collection, which forms part of this
exhibition. It is interesting to question their function
and what part these unfinished works may have played
in Cooper’s method of producing a miniature. It has
been suggested that Cooper may have worked on two
miniatures at the same time in front of the sitter.17 I
think this is highly unlikely as it would have been very
difficult to carry out in practice. A more probable
explanation is that these miniatures represent what had
been achieved during the first sitting but the miniature
was never completed either because Cooper or the
sitter was too busy and the subsequent sittings never
took place. Alternatively, as in the case of the miniature
of Cromwell, this was most likely taken as a face
pattern and was never meant to be brought to a finish
with the sitter present – hence the partially painted,
rectangular background behind the head. It was
normal practice in the 17th century for miniaturists to
work ad vivum and everything about Cooper’s vigorous
style suggests he did the same – when
time permitted.
1 Katherine Coombs, The Portrait Miniature in England (London, 1998), p. 61;
Jim Murrell, The Way Howe to Lymne, Tudor Miniatures Observed (London,
1983), p. 61.
2 Raman spectroscopy is a technique that allows the non-invasive and nondestructive pigment analysis by reference to a library of known spectra.
3 R.K.R Thornton and T.G.S. Cain eds., Nicholas Hilliard, A Treatise Concerning
the Arte of Limning (Manchester, 1992).
4 Jeffery M. Muller and Jim Murrell eds., Edward Norgate, Miniatura or the Art
of Limning (London and New Haven, 1997).
5 Alan Derbyshire, Nick Frayling, and Timea Tallian, ‘Sixteenth-century portrait
miniatures: key methodologies for a holistic approach’, in Mark Clarke, Joyce
H. Townsend and Ad Stijnman eds., Art of the Past, Sources and
Reconstructions, Archetype Publications (London 2005), p. 91.
6 In contrast, Cooper often required up to eight sittings (this was the case, for
example, for Pepys’ wife when she sat for her portrait miniature in 1668).
7 Muller and Murrell, op.cit. p. 66.
9 V&A Science Report 13–111–LB.
10 Katherine Coombs, British Watercolours 1750–1950 (London, 2012),
pp. 17–20.
11 Charles I, as Prince of Wales by Balthasar Gerbier, V&A: P.47–1935.
13 Thornton and Cain, op.cit. pp. 85–89.
14 Thornton and Cain, op.cit. p. 99.
15 The Pocket Book, V&A 460–1892, contained 4 miniatures attributed to
Cooper – V&A 446–1892, 448–1892,449–1892 and 454–1892 plus several
attributed to Susannah-Penelope Rosse.
16 These 5 miniatures are some 50% larger than Cooper’s average size portrait
miniatures, which adds to the idea that they were painted as face patterns from
which normal size miniatures could be produced at a later time.
17 John Murdoch, Seventeenth century English Miniatures in the Collection of the
Victoria and Albert Museum, (London, 1997), p. 164.
182
(Fig. 44) Samuel Cooper, Portrait of Lady Leigh (detail)
(Fig. 45) John Hoskins the elder, Portrait of Catherine
Howard (detail)
183
Face Value: Dress and Appearance
in the Work of Samuel Cooper
by professor aileen ribeiro
rince of Limners of this Age’, claimed John
Aubrey of his friend Samuel Cooper (he repeats
this phrase three times in Brief Lives);1 ‘Vandyck in
little’, says Bainbrigg Buckeridge in An Essay towards
an English School of Painters.2 He was highly praised
for the quality of his work, Richard Graham admiring
his miniatures for their ‘graceful and becoming Air, the
Strength, Relievo and noble Spirit, the Softness and
tender Liveliness of Flesh and Blood, and the loose and
gentile Management of the Hair ...’ .3 Cooper had a
profound perception of character, an essential attribute
of a miniaturist who, of necessity, must concentrate on
the face of a sitter. For likeness was crucial in the work
of the miniaturist, taking precedence, along with the
hair or wig, over the rest of the image. The costume
had to take second place, even when – with the formal
grandeur of elite clothing or armour – it serves to
underline status and character for men, and – as in the
relative uniformity of the schematised female bodice
– it showcases the influence of courtly fashion in many
of Cooper’s images of women. The variety of costume
in his portraits, and the ways in which clothing is
depicted, along with the subtlety of the painting of
the face and hair make Cooper one of the relatively
rare miniaturists whose work is as much great art as
likeness.4 But, although he depicted most of the preeminent persons of an age full of dramatic events, he
is hard to pin down as an artist; as David Piper rightly
remarks, his style ‘is that of the man he is portraying,
and he annihilates himself in his sitter’.5 As for his
personality, only small glimpses survive – Aubrey
noting, for example, that he was ‘an ingeniose person
and of great Humanity’.6
While cat. 1 is generally accepted as a self-portrait
by Cooper, the present writer has doubts.7 It depicts
a young man of fashion, exquisitely painted (a master
touch is the slight curling of the lace-edged collar),
in a silk doublet, the open front seam of the sleeve
decorated with silver lace, under an embroidered
184
doeskin jerkin or waistcoat. From the mid-17th
century onwards, there was a vogue for deerskin
coats and waistcoats (fig. 46); these were inspired by
the buff coats of hunters and of the army during the
Civil War, and such garments can be seen in a number
of Cooper’s miniatures. The middle-aged Cooper
exhibited here (cat. 67) is in a loose brown jacket and
doublet of plain brownish cloth, his embroidered linen
cravat is tied with a black ribbon and wears his own
hair, not a fashionable wig; it’s a world away from the
fashionable clothes Van Dyck favoured, but could it be
Cooper in comfortable working clothing?
Even if Cooper cared more for comfort than for
fashion, he needed the skills of an artist to depict the
luxurious and complicated clothes worn by his elite
clientele. As William Aglionby claimed in his 1686
treatise on painting, a good portrait (and Cooper
is cited here) must depict not only the character,
the ‘Spirit in Flesh and Blood’, but ‘the very Gloss
of Damask and the Softness of Velvet’, for such
details were the ‘still Life’ of such works of art.8 The
grandest costume of all was that of the oldest English
order of chivalry, that of the Garter, founded in the
14th century. Before the Restoration, members of
the order wore everyday clothing under the Garter
surcoat and mantle, but Charles II in 1661 underlined
the importance of the order as a sign of dynastic
continuity, by creating an ‘underhabit’ which wasn’t
‘too much the modern fashion’, and which consisted
of a cloth-of-silver short doublet and ‘the old trunk
hose or round breeches’, interpreted as a short wide
divided skirt9 – paradoxically very much the fashion of
the time, especially when decorated with bunches of
ribbon – and was depicted many times in the costume,
notably in the large 1665 miniature by Cooper (fig. 31,
Goodwood), given by the king to his mistress Louise
de Kéroualle.
Cooper’s portrait of Lord Arlington (cat. 57)
shows the statesman in his Garter mantle of ‘rich
celestial blue’ Genoa velvet,10 lined with white silk, the
diagonally placed red velvet sash of the surcoat, the
doublet and be-ribboned ‘skirt’, and over his shoulders
the Greater George, the massive gold and enamelled
collar of knots and roses with the pendant figure of St
George and the Dragon. Arlington received the Garter
in 1672, the year of Cooper’s death, and it seems highly
likely that another hand finished the costume and was
responsible for the hands, which are far too small. It
would be interesting to know if, as seems likely, Cooper
used the services of an assistant or drapery painter
to do the clothing, a custom initiated in England by
Van Dyck and widely in use by the second half of the
17th century; Graham notes that Cooper’s ‘Pencil was
generally confin’d to the Head only; and indeed below
that Part he was not always so successful as could be
wish’d ...’.11
Whether his lack of ‘success’ was due to inability
or indifference isn’t clear, and for an artist of his skill
the latter is probably the explanation, as he wished to
concentrate on the head above all. For the Restoration
was an age of complex and highly decorated male
clothing, the suit (replacing the short doublet and
wide ‘petticoat’ breeches) first appearing at court in
1666 in the form of a long coat and knee-breeches,
of rich fabrics trimmed with bunches of ribbons. In
David Loggan’s 1671 miniature of John Wilmot, 2nd
Earl of Rochester (fig. 47), the famous court wit and
poet, is shown here as the complete man of fashion,
in a lace cravat, with lace also decorating his shirt
ruffles, and an extraordinary coat decorated possibly
with braid or ribbons, or parchment lace (bobbin lace
incorporating ‘strips of parchment either painted or
closely wrapped in floss silk’).12 But the glory of the
image is the gossamer cloud of his wig of the finest
human hair.13 At the start of the Restoration, many
men still wore their own hair, as the Royalist statesman
Thomas Wriothesley does in 1661 in a fine miniature
by Cooper (cat. 47) and also the young Monmouth
(Fig. 46) Deerskin waistcoat embroidered with
silver thread, circa 1714–26
(Fig. 47) David Loggan, Portrait of John Wilmot,
2nd Earl of Rochester
185
(cat. 52). If a wig was worn, it copied the natural curls
of the hair; in the miniature of the young man (possibly
the Earl of Rochester) of the mid-1660s (cat. 54),
whether it’s his natural hair or a wig with the curls of
his own hair pulled through at the front, it dominates
his appearance. In contrast to the ornate costume worn
in the Loggan portrait, here Rochester is shown in a
simple grey doublet with a knot of orange shoulder
ribbons, with a beautiful collar of Flemish bobbin lace,
the most fashionable lace of Cooper’s time (fig. 48),
and in which the majority of his miniatures of men
are shown.
Whether real hair or a wig, it was the length
(and the implication of too much money and/or
time spent on it, and its perceived effeminacy) that
annoyed Puritan moralists such as Thomas Hall,
whose book The Loathsomnesse of Long Haire (1653)
was especially scornful of ‘these Periwigs of falsecoloured haire which begin to be rife ...’.14 But it was
a fashion impossible to stop, and wigs grew in size
and volume to the end of the century and beyond.
Wigs, so allied to social status, were even worn with
armour, as can be seen in a number of miniatures by
Cooper, although never in the case of Cromwell, a man
known for his personal simplicity and indifference to
fashion. In November 1640 Sir Philip Warwick noted
Cromwell’s ‘plain cloth-sute which seemed to have
bin made by an ill country-taylor; his linen was plain,
and not very clean; and I remember a speck or two
of blood upon his little band’.15 In Cooper’s famous
unfinished miniature of Oliver Cromwell (cat. 21),
the artist merely hints at the armour, depicts the plain
‘little band’ (i.e. collar), and concentrates on the face
‘warts and all’ and the receding, straggly hair – no
rich clothes and fashionable wig here, but one of the
most moving images of the century. Given Cromwell’s
career as a great military leader, it was inevitable that
he was usually portrayed in armour, but full armour
was, by the time the civil war broke out in 1642, no
186
longer worn except for official portraits (cat. 23), or
as an artistic convention. Army officers were usually
portrayed in a metal gorget (armour to protect the
throat) and/or breastplate and backplate worn over a
sturdy buff coat or jerkin (cat. 49).16
These buff coats were signifiers of masculinity, and
as such proved a piquant costume for daring women at
the court of Charles II to be portrayed in, as part of an
elite flirtation with male clothing, and as an audacious
alternative to the sexually revealing clothes we see in
portraits by Sir Peter Lely. Frances Teresa Stuart, later
Duchess of Richmond, and a famous court beauty, was
notable in the mid-1660s for dressing en travesti. The
Royal Collection has her portrait by Jacob Huysmans
in 1664 ‘in a buff doublet like a soldier’s’ (Pepys), and
a miniature by Samuel Cooper of her with a man’s wig
(or her own hair arranged as a wig), a lace cravat tied
with a blue ribbon and wearing a masculine doublet –
this was riding costume as worn by fashionable women
at court.17
A less well-known and unfinished miniature by
Cooper (fig. 49), of 1666, depicts Frances Stuart in a
blonde wig, a hat covered with white ostrich plumes
and a man’s doublet of figured velvet. Only the
grandest women at court could get away with such
audacious ‘masculine’ costume, which was frequently
criticised by moralists. It’s all the more striking that
one of Cooper’s earliest miniatures was of Van Dyck’s
mistress Margaret Lemon (cat. 6), dressed in a man’s
slashed black doublet, a black satin cloak bundled
over her arm, a black beaver hat over her hair which
is allowed to hang loose and curled in a ‘cavalier’ style
over a beautifully painted lace collar. The miniature
probably dates from the later 1630s, a period when
Van Dyck depicts a growing number of his male sitters
in black, almost in anticipation of the war a few years
in the future, and if the costume depicted in Cooper’s
portrait belonged to Van Dyck, it may suggest a closer
relationship between the two artists than has been
thought.18 Buckeridge stresses Cooper’s links with Van
Dyck, ‘many of whose pictures he copied, and which
made him imitate his style’.19 For example, Van Dyck’s
George Digby, later the 2nd Earl of Bristol (Dulwich
Picture Gallery) must have been the inspiration behind
Cooper’s Henry Carey, 2nd Earl of Monmouth of 1649
(Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), with its
sweep of satin drapery over the shoulder. Cooper’s
earliest known dated miniature, that of Elizabeth Cecil,
Countess of Devonshire, 1642 (cat. 7) is not only reliant
on Van Dyck for the superb swag of gold brocaded
Italian velvet drapery, but also for the informality of the
white silk bodice and skirt ensemble seen in a number
of the master’s portraits, including his portraits of
Queen Henrietta Maria.
In Cooper’s Elizabeth Cecil, the pose with clasped
hands over the belly (possibly signifying pregnancy)
is also copied from Van Dyck. Elizabeth Leigh, 1648
(cat. 13) wears a dress with jewelled openings at the
shoulders revealing the white shift, an imitation of a
pastoral style seen in a number of Van Dyck’s portraits,
including Frances, Lady Buckhurst, probably 1637
(Knole). And although fur tippets (scarves) were
popular from the 1630s (fig. 50), Hollar’s Fur muff and
tippets, 1645 – Cooper’s Woman in a sable fur, 1653
(cat. 27) may recall portraits by Van Dyck of women
similarly adorned.20 Like Hollar, Cooper delights in
the painting of fur, a skill aligned to the delicacy of
his depiction of hair, which was usually gathered in a
bun at the back and arranged at the sides in a mass of
curls as in Hollar’s etching of a woman, c.1645 (fig. 51)
or in bunches of ringlets from c.1660, as in Cooper’s
Catherine of Braganza of c.1662 (fig. 52), perhaps the
most beautiful image of the queen, more flattering and
subtle than the florid portraits by Lely. A rare image
of startling intimacy is Cooper’s unfinished miniature
of the royal mistress, Barbara Villiers, Countess of
Castlemaine (fig. 53), which shows her informal
appearance with hair hanging loose and undressed, ‘in
(Fig. 48) Flemish bobbin lace collar, c.1650–c.1665
(Fig. 49) Samuel Cooper, Portrait of Frances Teresa Stuart,
later Duchess of Richmond
187
(Fig. 50) Wenceslaus Hollar, Fur muff and tippets
(Fig. 52) Samuel Cooper, Portrait of Catherine of Braganza
188
(Fig. 51) Wenceslaus Hollar, Head of a young woman
(Fig. 53) Samuel Cooper, Portrait of Barbara Villiers,
Countess of Castlemaine
189
her haire’, as Pepys commented when he saw her in
1662, a sight which gave him some erotic delight.21
By the later 1630s, Van Dyck was beginning
to produce rather formulaic portraits of women,
streamlining the already elegant simplicity of
fashionable dress, and varying the appearance of his
sitters by adding such accessories as silk scarves and
costume jewellery. We can imagine that this trend
was one that appealed to Cooper, for the majority
of his miniatures of women concentrate on the face
and hairstyle; faces are pale (lacking the gloss and
cosmetics Lely gives his elite sitters), and often with
curiously uneven eyes, not a flattering look. Pearls
adorn the necks, ears and hair of his female sitters,
varied occasionally by a diamond brooch (Frances
Manners, Countess of Exeter, 1646, cat. 10) or a pearl
and diamond brooch (Mrs John Lewis, 1647, cat.
12, and Unknown woman, 1671, cat. 66). As for the
dress, Cooper keeps it to a minimum, plain silks, low
necks (no lace visible), clearly Lely’s influence here,
but – unlike the loose indolence of Lely’s draperies
and invented dress – Cooper follows the lines of the
fashion, the bodice firmly structured, which it had to
be to stay on the body and not fall off the shoulders.
An extant bodice (fig. 54) of pale bluish-green watered
silk is heavily boned at front and back and over the
shoulders, so that it stays in place; dating from the
1650s, this bodice is evidence that fashion was not –
even during the Interregnum – influenced by Puritan
ideology, although Thomas Hall in 1654 criticised
women who ‘have their garments made on such a
fashion that their necks and breasts are in great part
left naked’.22 This was a look that presumably Cooper’s
sitters liked (including Cromwell’s daughters), as it
had a courtly air, and could easily be accessorised with
scarves, ribbon bows and jewellery.
190
(Fig. 54) Woman’s silk bodice, 1650s
How much should Cooper be taken at face value?
Not always with regard to the clothes depicted, for
which other hands in his studio might be responsible,
nor can we assume that the armour or the largely fictive
dresses and jewellery reflect at all times the reality of
what the sitters wore. But while the clothes are remote
from us now, the faces remain, and Cooper depicts
them with such indefinable alchemy that we recognise
them as familiar to us, whether great characters from
history or people we might encounter in everyday
life. This is why, I think, that it’s the unfinished works
which most resonate with us, and which look most
modern, the flawed nobility of Cromwell and the
indolent sexuality of Barbara Villiers ‘in her haire’.23
1 John Buchanan-Brown ed., John Aubrey, Brief Lives, (London, 2000), p. 61.
2 Bainbrigg Buckeridge, ‘An Essay towards an English School of Painters’
(1706), in Roger de Piles, The Art of Painting, transl. John Savage, (London,
1744), p. 364.
3 Richard Graham, ‘A Short Account of the most Eminent Painters, both
Ancient and Modern’ (1695), in C.A Du Fresnoy, The Art of Painting,
(London, 1716), p. 376.
4 The other end of the scale being Miss La Creevy in Dickens’ Nicholas Nickleby
(1839), whose limitations are evident in her dictum is that a miniature ‘must
be either serious or smirking, or it’s no portrait at all’; by this time the
miniature is in decline, and shortly to be more out-of-date with the arrival of
photography, and especially the carte de visite.
5 David Piper, The English Face, National Portrait Gallery, (London, 1992),
p. 90.
6 Aubrey, Brief Lives, op.cit. p. 431.
7 The whole appearance of the sitter and his costly and fashionable clothing
seems inconsistent with a self-portrait, especially of an artist who – unlike
Van Dyck – was not known for elegant self-presentation, if we are to accept
the identification of cat. 67; nor is this sitter in his mid-thirties, which Cooper
would have been in 1645! It has been suggested that self-portraits tend to
adopt a pose of the head turned to look over the shoulder engaging the eye of
the viewer, and the arm slightly raised. This is certainly the case with regard
to Van Dyck, but it should be noted that he never depicts himself in the detail
of clothing, but in a generalised version of the doublet so as not to distract
attention from the face. Moreover, the pose of the head in cat. 1 is not
exclusive to artists’ self-portraits, and here we don’t necessarily see a raised
arm, but a slightly stiffened doublet sleeve, open down the front seam, which
creates the wide shape which doesn’t follow the line of the arm.
8 William Aglionby, Painting Illustrated in Three Diallogues, (London, 1686),
p. 22.
9 Peter J. Begent and Hubert Chesshyre, The Most Noble Order of the Garter,
(London, 1999), p. 149. The ‘breeches’ either took the form of a wide divided
skirt or a skirt without separate leg divisions, as in the effigy of Charles II in
Westminster Abbey.
10 Ibid, p. 149.
11 Graham, ‘A Short Account of the most Eminent Painters, both Ancient and
Modern’, op.cit, p. 375.
12 I’m grateful for this definition of parchment lace from Clare Browne in an
email to me 6/8/2013.
13 Human hair was the most expensive, and a whole head wig might cost in 1670
as much as £40, which according to the National Archives Currency
Converter, would be about £3,000 in today’s money. A less expensive
alternative was half-wigs, known as ‘borders’ which were mixed in to a
man’s own hair to create fullness at the sides; an example is Cooper’s Earl of
Lauderdale, 1664 (NPG).
14 Quoted in Aileen Ribeiro, Fashion and Fiction. Dress in Art and Literature in
Stuart England, New Haven & London 2005, p. 86.
15 From Warwick’s Memoires of the Reign of King Charles I, quoted in Ribeiro
2005, p. 197.
16 Buff coats and jerkins originally made of unlined European buffalo hide,
could also be made of oxhide or deerhide; heavy and thick (they could
withstand a sword thrust), substantial numbers of these garments exist
in museums, including the Museum of London and the Victoria and
Albert Museum.
17 Van Dyck’s portrait of Queen Henrietta Maria with Jeffrey Hudson, 1633
(National Gallery of Art, Washington) shows the queen in riding costume,
with a man’s hat of black beaver with a white ostrich plume, and lace collar,
but although the torso of her bodice is styled in a masculine way, the sleeves
with spiky lace ruffles are feminine, and the full-length image allows the skirt
to be seen, which is not the case in Cooper’s somewhat ambiguous miniatures,
where we are left to wonder if Frances Stuart does wear breeches.
18 As Emma Rutherford notes, there is ‘much circumstantial evidence that the
two men would have crossed paths’; see Bendor Grosvenor (ed.), Finding
Van Dyck. Newly discovered and rarely seen works by Van Dyck and his
followers, Philip Mould Ltd, London 2011, p. 63. The miniature of Margaret
Lemon is a very private image with an erotic sensual charge mainly conveyed
by the choice of masculine dress. It isn’t, I think, riding dress, which although
based on the male doublet, was more structured to a feminine shape and worn
over a corset.
19 Buckeridge, ‘An Essay towards an English School of Painters’ op.cit., p. 365.
20 For example, Van Dyck’s Mary Villiers with Lord Arran, c.1636 (N. Carolina
Museum of Art, Raleigh) and Lucy Percy, Countess of Carlisle, c.1637
(Petworth).
21 ‘I glutted myself with looking on her’, said Pepys; quoted in Ribeiro 2005,
p. 274.
22 From Hall’s Divers Reasons Against Painting, Spots, naked Backs, Breasts,
Arms, &c, quoted in Ribeiro Dress and Morality, Oxford & New York, 2003.
p. 82.
23 My thanks to Emma Rutherford for inviting me to write this essay, and her
help, along with that of Emma Calvert, in sending images and photographs.
Especial thanks to Clare Browne, Curator of European Textiles 1500–1800,
Victoria & Albert Museum, for her help with lace, and to Beatrice Behlen,
Senior Curator, Fashion & Decorative Arts, Museum of London, for showing
me buff coats and jerkins.
191
Miniatures by Samuel Cooper
in the Buccleuch Collection
by dr stephen lloyd
he celebrated collection of portrait miniatures
in the Buccleuch collection numbers around 800
works, principally by the leading limners working in
England during the 16th and 17th centuries, most
notably by Samuel Cooper, all painted in bodycolour
and watercolour on vellum. These portraits by
painters who mainly had their studios in London, are
complemented by important groups of enamels and
small oils by continental artists active during the 17th
and early 18th centuries. The Buccleuch collection
possesses additional and chiefly family portaits painted
in watercolour on ivory during the later 18th and early
19th century. Founded on a core of around 150 family
miniatures that had been assembled by the Montagu
and Scott branches of the family, the collection was
substantially added to by Walter Francis, 5th Duke of
Buccleuch and 7th Duke of Queensberry (1806–84)
and to a lesser extent by his son William, 6th Duke
of Buccleuch and 8th Duke of Queensberry (1831–
1914). Their purchases were made on the advice of
Andrew McKay, who worked for Messrs P. & D.
Colnaghi & Co., the well-known firm of London-based
printsellers, who were simultaneously building up for
the same clients an extensive collection of prints by the
old masters, notably Rembrandt, alongside engravings
of historical portraits and works by modern masters
such as Landseer.1
At the heart of the Buccleuch collection of
miniatures is an important and numerous group of
works by Samuel Cooper, of which by far and away the
most renowned example is the unfinished limning of
Oliver Cromwell (cat. 21), which is probably datable
to 1650. By the time the second edition of Andrew
McKay’s privately printed Catalogue of the Miniatures
in Montagu House belonging to the Duke of Buccleuch
saw the light of day in 1899, there were entries for no
less than 47 portraits then given to Samuel Cooper,
many of which can now be seen as bearing over
optimistic attributions and speculative identifications
192
of the sitters. By 1974 when Daphne Foskett, then the
leading connoisseur of miniatures painted in Britain,
curated the last monographic exhibition devoted to
Samuel Cooper at the National Portrait Gallery in
London, she had whittled that number down to 22
loans from the Buccleuch of works she considered
to be by Cooper. In her monograph on the artist
published that same year she identified 26 works –
including 17 dated and 9 undated works by Cooper in
the Buccleuch collection. That number of miniatures,
which can be firmly attributed to Cooper today, has
remained fairly constant. This essay will examine
aspects of the history of these portraits by Samuel
Cooper at the heart of the Buccleuch Collection and
how their attributions and the identities have been
changed over the course of the twentieth century by
connoisseurs and art historians.
In terms of the history of the collection, the 5th
Duke had clearly been buying miniatures from the
early 1840s – as at the famous Strawberry Hill sale of
Horace Walpole’s renowned antiquarian collections
in 1842.2 By the time of the famous Art Treasures
exhibition in Manchester held in 1857, he was able
to lend ten frames of ‘miscellaneous miniatures’,
probably loaning as many as 150 miniatures.3
These were exhibited in the Transept Gallery of the
Manchester exhibition building alongside six frames
of miniatures from the equally rich private collection
of the Duke of Portland, which had been founded
on the collecting activities in the early eighteenth
century of Robert and Edward Harley, the 1st and
2nd second Earls of Oxford. No portraits by Cooper
were identified among the Buccleuch loans in the 1857
exhibition, as the catalogue entries were so brief, but
it is very likely that works by Cooper would have been
present among the loan of miniatures dating from the
Tudor and Stuart periods.
Five years later in 1862, the 5th Duke made his
spectacular purchase from Colnaghi of the group of
three miniatures of the Cromwell family, including the
famous unfinished portrait of Oliver Cromwell and his
wife Elizabeth, née Bourchier (cats. 21 & 19) and one of
their daughters, probably Elizabeth Cromwell (fig. 55),
who married John Claypole. This already celebrated
group of Cromwell miniatures had later descended by
inheritance through the Frankland family until their
sale to Colnaghi. A few months after the acquisition of
this family group by the 5th Duke of Buccleuch in June
1862, the three Cromwell miniatures were exhibited
at the very large exhibition held at the newly founded
South Kensington Museum, The Special Exhibition
of Works of Art of the Mediaeval, Renaissance, and
more recent Periods. In the section of the exhibition
on portrait miniatures, the Duke lent four frames
of 112 miniatures, of which three frames displayed
Tudor and Stuart examples, while the fourth exhibited
enamels by the French 17th-century artist Jean Petitot
(1607–91). In Frame no. 3, devoted to 17th-century
English miniatures, there were 13 portraits by Samuel
Cooper displayed, including the famous Cromwell
trio.4 The other Coopers loaned from the Buccleuch
Collection were three further portraits of Oliver
Cromwell, one each of Richard Cromwell and of Henry
Cromwell (sons of Oliver Cromwell), two said to be
of John Milton, and one each of Samuel Pepys, the
author Samuel Butler and Admiral Penn, father of the
celebrated Quaker, William Penn. Interestingly, the
only miniatures from this group of ten miniatures, that
still retain a confident attribution to Cooper are those
of Richard Cromwell (fig. 56) and a portrait of a man
formerly called Henry Cromwell.5
The period from 1862 to 1899 saw committed
purchases of miniatures by the 5th and 6th Dukes both
from Colnaghi and at auction in London with these
dealers acting as agents. By the time of the second
edition of Andrew McKay’s privately printed catalogue
of the Buccleuch miniatures, the 47 miniatures then
confidently attributed to Cooper were identified as the
(Fig. 55) Samuel Cooper, Probably Elizabeth
Cromwell, Mrs John Claypole (Bowhill)
(Fig 56) Samuel Cooper, Portrait of Richard
Cromwell (Bowhill)
193
following works (those accepted today as having been painted by Cooper are marked with an asterisk, while the
titles of the sitters are placed in brackets, if their identifications are now thought to be unsustainable):
*George Monck, Duke of Albemarle (signed: S.C.).6
*’John, 1st Baron Belasyse.7
*’Lady Mary Fairfax, Duchess of Buckingham’ (x2) (both signed: S.C.) (fig. 57).8
Samuel Butler (signed: S.C.).9
Charles II (x 4).10
*‘The 2nd Earl of Chesterfield’, now accepted as James Scott, Duke of Monmouth (signed and dated:
S.C. 1667) (cat. 53)11
*‘Lady Elizabeth Butler, Countess of Chesterfield’, now considered to be an unidentified sitter (signed
and dated: S.C. 1665)12
Catherine Wotton, Countess of Chesterfield13
*Elizabeth Cromwell, Mrs Claypole, daughter of Oliver Cromwell (signed and dated: S.C. 1652)14
*Lady Penelope Compton, wife of Sir Edward Nicholas (signed: S.C.) (fig. 58)15
*Elizabeth Bourchier, wife of Oliver Cromwell16
*’Henry Cromwell’ (signed: S.C.)17
*Oliver Cromwell18
* Richard Cromwell (x 2)19
Charles Stanley, 8th Earl of Derby20
*’Charlotte de la Trémoille, Countess of Derby’, now considered an unidentified sitter (signed and dated:
S.C. 1671) (cat. 66)21
Frances Ward, Baroness Dudley (signed: S.C.)22
Lucius Cary, 2nd Viscount Falkland (signed: S.C.)23
Mary, Countess of Fauconberg24
Sir Robert Gayer25
Charles, Lord Herbert (signed: S.)26
*’Lady Heydon’, now considered an unidentified sitter (signed: S.C.)27
*James, Duke of York, later James II (x 2) (signed and dated: S.C. 167[–])28
*’Thomas Osborne, Earl of Danby and afterwards Duke of Leeds’ (signed: S.C.)29
**’Princess Mary, daughter of Charles I’, now considered an unidentified sitter (x 2) (signed and
dated: S.C. 1647; signed: S.C.)30
Sir John Maynard31
*Lady Paston, Countess of Yarmouth, natural daughter of Charles II and Elizabeth,
Lady Shannon (signed: S.C.)32
John Milton (signed: S.C.)33
*‘The Marquis of Montrose’, after Van Dyck34
William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, after Van Dyck35
*Charles, 4th Duke of Richmond and 6th Duke of Lennox (signed and dated: S.C. 1654)36
Frances, Duchess of Richmond (x2) (signed and dated: S.C. 1655)37
*Prince Rupert38
*Sir Adrian Scrope (signed and dated: S.C. 1650)39
Thomas Wriothesley, 4th Earl of Southampton40
*’Elizabeth, Countess of Southampton’ (signed: S.C.)41
John, 2nd Earl of Thanet42
John Thurloe43
Horatio, 1st Viscount Townshend (signed and dated: S.C. 1652)44
Edmund Waller45
*Portrait of a Gentleman (signed and dated: S.C. 1651)46
*Portrait of a Lady, after Van Dyck (signed and dated: S.C. 1655)47
**Portrait of a Lady (x2) (both signed and dated: S.C.)48
194
(Fig. 57) Samuel Cooper, Portrait of Mary
Fairfax, Duchess of Buckingham (Buccleuch)
(Fig. 58) Samuel Cooper, Portrait of Lady
Penelope Compton (Drumlanrig)
195
The whole of the Buccleuch collection of portrait
miniatures, which had been normally displayed at
the Buccleuch family’s London residence at Montagu
House in Whitehall, was placed on long-term loan
at the Victoria & Albert Museum during and after
the First World War from 1916–20. The first serious
scholarly attempt to scrutinise the attributions and
identifications of the Buccleuch miniatures was made
by H.A. Kennedy in the 1917 special publication for
The Studio, when many of Andrew McKay’s more
optimistic assertions were downgraded.49 During the
Second World War a small selection of the Buccleuch
miniatures were sold to three British museums –
the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the
Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge and the National
Maritime Museum at Greenwich.50 After the Second
World War, the rest of the collection was brought up
to Scotland to be displayed at the Buccleuch family’s
two main residences, firstly Drumlanrig Castle in
Dumfriesshire and then since the 1970s at Bowhill in
the Borders. A selection of 80 of the finest miniatures,
including 14 of the finest Coopers, was loaned to an
exhibition at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in
Edinburgh in 1996–7.51 The current owner Richard,
10th Duke of Buccleuch, is preparing a new display
of the pre-eminent miniatures, including the famous
group of works by Samuel Cooper, at Bowhill for the
summer of 2014.
196
1 Andrew McKay, Catalogue of the Miniatures in Montagu House belonging to
the Duke of Buccleuch, 2nd edn. (London, 1899) [The Collection of Miniatures
in Montagu House, 1st edn 1896]; Ninety-Six Miniatures from the Collection
lent by the Duke of Buccleuch, exh. cat., H.A. Kennedy ed., 2nd edn., (London
1st edn. 1916; 3rd edn. 1918); H.A. Kennedy, Early English Portrait Miniatures
in the Collection of the Duke of Buccleuch [special number of The Studio],
(London, 1917) and Portrait Miniatures from the Collection of the Duke
of Buccleuch, exh. cat., by Stephen Lloyd, Scottish National Portrait Gallery,
Edinburgh 1996–7.
2 Through the agent Horace Rodd at the Strawberry Hill sale in 1842, on day 14
the 5th Duke purchased lot 9 for £3, the miniature by Cooper of Lady
Penelope Compton, wife of Sir Edward Nicholas, cf. Michael Snodin ed., Horace
Walpole’s Strawberry Hill, exh. cat., Yale Center for British Art, New Haven
and Victoria & Albert Museum, (London, 2008–9), p. 329, no. 221.
3 George Scharf ed., Exhibition of the Art Treasures of the United Kingdom, exh.
cat. (Manchester 1857), pp. 207–8, Miniatures, nos. 7 to 16 and single items
nos. 17 and 21.
4 J.C. Robinson ed., Catalogue of the Special Exhibition of Works of Art of the
Mediaeval, Renaissance and more recent Periods, exh. cat., (London, 1862),
Section 11 (Portrait Miniatures), Frame 3, nos. 2067–71, 2078–9, 2084, 2087,
2091 and 2100–3 (the Cromwell group).
5 Daphne Foskett, Samuel Cooper and his Contemporaries, exh. cat., National
Portrait Gallery (London 1974), p. 23, nos. 45 and 46 (both ill.), which may
be identified as Henry and Richard Cromwell respectively.
6 Montagu House, Gallery, Frame P, no. 18.
7 Montagu House, Drawing Room, Frame B, no. 25.
8 Montagu House, Gallery, Frame N, no. 18. This was formerly in the
collections of Horace Walpole and Lord Northwick and was acquired by the
5th Duke at the Northwick sale on 3rd August 1859, lot 732. Also see Frame
N, no. 23.
9 Montagu House, Gallery, Frame Q, no. 11.
10 Montagu House, Gallery, Frame A, nos. 1, 19 and 20; Frame D, no. 9. One of
the Buccleuch miniatures of Charles II was purchased by the National
Maritime Museum during the Second World War, NML no. MNT0188.
11 Montagu House, Gallery, Frame O, no. 2. Now identified as James Scott,
Duke of Monmouth.
12 Montagu House, Gallery, Frame P, no. 2.
13 Montagu House, Additions to the collection, Frame EE, no. 8. A Colnaghi
receipt in the Buccleuch archive, dated 13th June 1899, notes that the 6th
Duke was charged £170 for ‘A Miniature portrait of Anne, Lady Chesterfiled
Daughter of Lord Wotton by Cooper’.
14 Montagu House, Gallery, Frame Q, no. 4, and also in the Cabinet at the
East End of the Drawing Room, displayed in the rosewood box with Cooper’s
miniatures of her parents.
15 Montagu House, Gallery, Frame N, no. 9. See above note 2.
16 Montagu House, the Cabinet at the East End of the Drawing Room
(displayed in a rosewood box together with Cooper’s miniatures of her
husband and one of their daughters, most probably Elizabeth).
17 Montagu House, Gallery, Frame F, no. 13.
18 Montagu House, the Cabinet at the East End of the Drawing Room (the
famous unfinished miniature displayed in a rosewood box together with
Cooper’s miniatures of Oliver Cromwell’s wife and one of their daughters,
most probably Elizabeth).
19 Montagu House, Gallery, Frame F, nos. 3 and 20.
20 Montagu House, Additions to the Collection, Frame AA, no. 1.
21 Montagu House, Gallery, Frame R, no. 4.
22
23
24
25
Montagu House, Gallery, Frame R, no. 17.
Montagu House, Drawing Room, Frame B, no. 10.
Montagu House, Drawing Room, Frame B, no. 4.
Montagu House, Gallery, Frame R, No. 23. Purchased for the 5th Duke at
Lord Northwick’s sale in 1859.
27 Montagu House, Gallery, Frame R, No. 36. Purchased for the 5th Duke at
the Strawberry Hill sale in 1842.
28 Montagu House, Gallery, Frame A, No. 28 (signed and dated) and Frame R,
No. 9 (not signed or dated). The signed and dated Cooper of James II as Duke
of Yok was purchased by the National Maritime Museum during the Second
World War, NML no. MNT0191.
30 Montagu House, Additions to the Collection, Frame CC, no. 5 (sd. 1647) and
no. 4 (signed).
31 Montagu House, Gallery, Frame F, no. 6. This was formerly in the collections
of Horace Walpole and Lord Northwick and was acquired for the 5th Duke at
Lord Northwick’s sale in 1859.
32 Montagu House, Gallery Frame 85, no. 2.
35 Montagu House, Gallery, Frame R, No. 31. The attribution of this large
cabinet miniature has swung between Samuel Cooper and John Hoskins
throughout the 20th century, but is now thought to have been painted by
neither artist. The Duke of Newcastle is shown wearing the blue sash and
jewel of the Order of the Garter, which he was awarded in 1661.
36 Montagu House, Drawing Room, Frame B, no. 21 (signed and dated) and
Drawing Room, Frame B, no. 31 (not signed or dated).
37 Montagu House, Gallery, Frame R, no. 3.
38 Montagu House, Gallery, Frame A, no. 31. Purchased by the National
Maritime Museum, Greenwich, during the Second World War (now NML no.
MNT0122).
44 Montagu House, Additions to the Collection, Frame AA, no. 13. Purchased
by the 6th Duke at the sale of miniatures belonging to the Earl of
Westmorland in 1892.
45 Montagu House, Additions to the Collection, Frame BB, no. 1. Purchased by
the 6th Duke at the sale of miniatures belonging to Mr C.S. Bale.
46 Montagu House, Additions to the Collection, Frame BB, no. 2. Purchased at
the Hamilton Palace sale in 1882.
47 Montagu House, Gallery, Frame A, no. 32.
48 Montagu House, Gallery, Frame N, no. 5 and Drawing Room, Frame B, no.
16 (both signed: S.C.).
49 H.A. Kennedy ed., Ninety-Six Miniatures from the Collection lent by the Duke
of Buccleuch, exh. cat., 2nd edn, V&A,, London (1st edn 1916; 3rd edn 1918);
H.A. Kennedy, Early English Portrait Miniatures in the Collection of the Duke
of Buccleuch [special number of The Studio], London 1917.
50 Stephen Lloyd, Portrait Miniatures from the Collection of the Duke of
Buccleuch, exh. cat., Scottish National Portrait Gallery (Edinburgh, 1996–7),
pp. 98–9.
51 Ibid, pp. 46–53 and 80–87.
197
Author Biographies
R ichard C hadwick started his career at Sotheby’s in
1989 and was formerly a former head of department
at Christie’s in London for nine years. His particular
interest in 17th and 18th century enamels lead to
a wider involvement with the research of portrait
miniatures, where he has made several new discoveries
and written extensively on the subject.
A lan D erbyshire obtained a BSc. in Physics from
the University of Manchester Institute of Science and
Technology in 1975 before going on to study paper
conservation at Gateshead Technical College. He is
Head of Paper, Books and Paintings Conservation
at the Victoria and Albert Museum, where he has
worked since 1983. Since 1990 he has specialised in
the conservation of portrait miniatures on ivory and
vellum. He has written, taught and lectured extensively
on the conservation of works of art on paper and on
portrait miniatures.
M artyn D owner is a former director of Sotheby’s
London, and a specialist dealer in silver and historic
works of art, particularly relating to Admiral Lord
Nelson. He is the author of several historical
biographies including Nelson’s Purse (2004) and
The Queen’s Knight (2007). In 2008, he founded
myfamilysilver.com which matches visitors to family
crested antique silver.
198
D r B endor G rosvenor is a director of Philip Mould
& Co., where his most important discoveries include a
number of works by Van Dyck. He does the research
for and appears in the BBC1 series ‘Fake or Fortune?’,
which has so far identified lost paintings by artists such
as Degas and Turner, and is also a regular presenter for
The Culture Show on BBC2. A historian by training,
he is a member of two government advisory bodies
on archives and academic research, and has recently
published Documents on Conservative Foreign Policy
1852–1878 (Cambridge, 2012).
D r S tephen L loyd is Curator of the Derby
Collection at Knowsley Hall, Merseyside. For many
years he was Senior Curator at the Scottish National
Portrait, Edinburgh. He has written widely on portrait
miniatures, the Cosways, the history of collecting in
Britain during the Regency period and on portraiture
in Scotland around 1800. He has recently co-edited a
volume of studies, Henry Raeburn: Context, Reception
and Reputation (Edinburgh, 2012). He was President
of International Council of Museum’s committee for
museums and collections of fine art (2004–10).
E mma R utherford is a freelance art historian, who
has specialised in portrait miniatures and silhouettes
for over twenty years. Prior toher new role as a
freelance consultant, she worked in the portrait
miniature department at both Phillips and Bonhams
Auctioneers, eventually becoming departmental
director. She has curated several exhibitions of portrait
miniatures, as well as writing extensively on the subject
and advising private and public collections. Since 2007
she has been the consultant for portrait miniatures at
Philip Mould and Company.
L awrence H endra joined Philip Mould & Co. in
2011, after graduating with a degree in History of Art
from Plymouth University. Prior to working at the
gallery, Lawrence worked for a number of years as an
independent art dealer in the South-West, specialising
in British Impressionist and Modernist art, and making
numerous significant discoveries, including a lost
early work by Henry Scott Tuke in 2007. He assists
with the gallery’s research and cataloguing where
notable discoveries include an important lost work by
Reynolds as well as portrait miniatures by John Smart
and John Hoskins.
P hilip M ould obe graduated with a degree in
History of Art from the University of East Anglia, and
was recently elevated by the institution to Honorary
Doctor. A specialist in British portraiture he has been
a prominent dealer since the mid 1980’s, and is widely
known for his books and television appearances on the
subject of art connoisseurship.
L indsay S tainton was an historian and then a
curator, first at Kenwood and then at the British
Museum. She has organised many exhibitions, ranging
from Claude-Joseph Vernet to Anthony Caro, and
from Thomas Gainsborough to Bridget Riley, as well
as writing various books.
A ileen R ibeiro is Professor Emeritus at the
Courtauld Institute of Art, where she was Head of the
History of Dress department from 1975 to 2009. She
lectures widely in Great Britain, Europe and North
America, and has acted as costume consultant
/contributor to many major art exhibitions. The author
of many books, the most recent is Facing Beauty.
Painted Women and Cosmetic Art (Yale University
Press, 2011). She is currently working on a book about
the relationships between art and fashion.
199
List of illustrations
catalogue numbers
Cat. 1 © Royal Collection Trust /©Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2013
Cat. 2 © National Trust Images/John Hammond
Cat. 3 © Collection of the Duke of Northumberland
Cat. 4 © Philip Mould and Company
Cat. 6 © Fondation Custodia, Collection Frits Lugt, Paris
Cat. 7 © The Burghley House Collection
Cat. 11 © Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
Cat. 14 © Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Cat. 17 © National Portrait Gallery, London
Cat. 19 © By kind permission of the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry KBE
Cat. 22 © Birmingham Museums Trust
Cat. 23 © Compton Verney
Cat. 25 Image Courtesy of Warwick Castle
Cat. 30 Reproduced with kind permission of the Hon. Simon Howard
Cat. 34 © Private Collection
Cat. 37 © Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh
200
Cat. 39 ©Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Cat. 40 ©Private Collection
Cat. 43 ‘Thomas Alcock’, Samuel Cooper, WA1897.33 © Ashmolean Museum,
University of Oxford. Bequeathed by Dr Richard Rawlinson, 1755
Cat. 44 Lent by the Trustees of the Denys Eyre Bower Bequest
Cat. 44A Reproduced with kind permission of the Hon. Simon Howard
Cat. 46 © Private Collection
Cat. 47 Reproduced by kind permission of His Grace the Duke of Bedford and
the Trustees of the Bedford Estates’
Cat. 49 ‘A Young Man in Armour’, Samuel Cooper, WA1947.191.293 © Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford. Bentinck Hawkins Bequest, 1894.
Cat. 52 Royal Collection Trust /©Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2013
Cat. 54 ‘Young Man in Grey’, Samuel Cooper, WA1936.103 © Ashmolean
Museum, Oxford
Cat. 55 ‘Man in Armour’, Samuel Cooper, WA1897.36 © Ashmolean Museum,
Oxford
Cat. 56 From the collection at Blair Castle, Perthshire
Cat. 57 Reproduced with kind permission of the Hon. Simon Howard
Cat. 58 © © Philip Mould and Company
Cat. 59A © Philip Mould and Company
Cat. 64A © Philip Mould and Company
figures
essays
Fig. 1 © Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Fig. 2 © The British Library Board. (Sloane 2052 f77r−77v)
Fig. 3 © Trustees of the British Museum
Fig. 5 © Philip Mould Ltd
Fig. 6 ©Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Fig. 7 Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2013
Fig. 8 ©Museum Briner & Kern, Winterthur
Fig. 9 ©Archbishopric of Olomouc
Fig. 10 © Philip Mould and Company
Fig. 11 © Tate, London 2013
Fig. 13 © Burghley House Collection/ The Bridgeman Art Library
Fig. 15 © By kind permission of the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry KBE
Fig. 17 © The State Hermitage Museum /photo by Vladimir Terebenin, Leonard
Kheifets, Yuri Molodkovets
Fig. 18 © Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, MA, USA / The Bridgeman Art Library
Fig. 19 © Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth. Reproduced by permission of
Chatsworth Settlement Trustees.
Fig. 21 © National Portrait Gallery, London
Fig. 24 © Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth. Reproduced by permission of
Chatsworth Settlement Trustees.
Fig. 28 © Private Collection
Fig. 30 By kind permission of the Trustees of The Wallace Collection, London
Fig. 31 © The Trustees of the Goodwood Collection / The Bridgeman Art
Library
Fig. 32 ©Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Fig. 33 ©National Trust Images
Fig. 34 © 2013. Photo Scala, Florence -courtesy of the Ministero Beni e Att.
Culturali
Fig. 36 © Private Collection
Fig. 46 © Museum of London
Fig. 49 Collection Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Fig. 54 © Museum of London
201
Index of artists
( excluding S amuel C ooper )
C ooper , A lexander (bap.1609–60)
p. 28
D es G ranges , D avid (c.1611–after1672)
p. 88
D ixon , N icholas (b.c.1645–1708)
p. 162
F latman , T homas (1635–88)
p. 164
G ibson , R ichard (b.c.1605/15–90)
p. 102
H oskins , J ohn ,
the elder
(c.1590–1665)
H oskins , J ohn ,
the younger
(1620s–after 1703)
pp. 98 & 168
L ely , S ir P eter (1618–80)
p. 69
R ichter , C hristian (1678–1732)
p. 82
R osse , S usannah -P enelope (c.1655–1700)
pp. 51 & 159
S nelling , M atthew (1621–78)
p. 100
S pencer , G ervase (d.1763)
p. 157
T hach , N athaniel (1617–after 1652)
202
pp. 26 & 42
p. 86
203
Index of sitters
pp. 114–116
A lcock , T homas (c.1632–after 1687(?))
p. 148
A rlington , H enry , 1st Earl of (1618–85)
A tholl , L ady A melia , Countess of (d. 1702/3)
p. 146
B elasyse , J ohn , 1st Baron (bap.1615–89)
p. 46
B uckingham , M ary , Duchess of
pp. 96 & 195
C apel , L ady E lizabeth (1609/10–61)
p. 54
C atherine of B raganza , Queen of England (1638–1705)
pp. 187–188
C arew , L ady S arah (d.1671)
pp. 104–7
C arew , S ir J ohn , 3rd Bt. of Antony (1635–92)
p. 108
C arnarvon , E lizabeth , Countess of (1633–78)
p. 102
C hadwick , K atherine
p. 110
C harles I (1600–49)
p. 26
C harles II (1630–85)
pp. 86 & 118–121
C lare , J ohn , 2nd Earl of (1595–1666)
p. 97
C laypole , E lizabeth (née Cromwell), a lady thought to be
p. 193
C leveland , B arbara , Duchess of (1640–1709)
pp. 187 & 189
C ompton , L ady P enelope
p. 195
C ooper , S amuel (1607/8–1672)
pp. 20-3 & pp. 168-176
C ooper , C hristiana (1623–1693)
p. 107
C romwell , E lizabeth (née Bourchier) (1598–1665)
p. 64
C romwell , O liver (1599–1658)
pp. 60–2 & 68–83
C romwell , R ichard (1626–1712)
p. 193
and a young man called
p. 66
D evonshire , E lizabeth , Countess of (née cecil) (c.1620–89)
p. 36–38
D orset , E dward , 4th Earl of (1591–1652)
p. 10
D over , H enry , 3rd Baron (1636–1708)
p. 144
E xeter , F rances , Countess of (c.1636–60)
p. 44
204
F anshawe , S ir R ichard , 1st Bt., (1608–66)
p. 94
G eorge III
p. 14
G wyn , N ell (1650–87)
pp. 154–161
H arley , S ir E dward (1624–1700)
p. 124
H enrietta M aria , Queen of England (1609–69)
p. 26
H olland , H enry , 1st Earl of (1590–1649)
p. 24
H oskins , J ohn , the younger (1620s–after 1703)
p. 99
J ames II, as Duke of York (1633–1701)
p. 88
K illigrew , W illiam (bap.1606–95)
pp. 30–1
L angley , L ady E lizabeth (née Hewet) (d. 1702)
p. 164
L angley , S ir H enry (d.1688)
p. 164
L eigh /L ey , M argaret , a Lady called
pp. 50–53
L emon , M argaret
pp. 32–5
L ewis , M rs J ohn (née Foote)
p. 48
L indsey , M ontagu , 2nd Earl of (1607/8–66)
p. 56
M arsham , L ady E lizabeth (née Hammond) (1612–89)
p. 112
M edici , C osimo III de (1642–1723)
pp. 151–153
M onmouth and B uccleuch , J ames , 1st Duke of (1649–85)
pp. 136–141
N orthumberland , E lizabeth , Countess of (c.1622–1705)
p. 40
R ivers , S ir T homas (c.1625–57)
p. 63
R ochester , J ohn , 2nd Earl of (1647–80), a Gentleman formerly called p. 142
S outhampton , T homas , 4th Earl of (1607–67), a Gentleman called
p. 126
S tuart , E lizabeth (1596–1662)
p. 29
S pottiswode family , a member of
p. 28
T hanet , N icholas , 3rd Earl of (1631–79)
p. 128
V an D yck , S ir A nthony (1599–1641)
p. 21
W alker , R obert (1599–1658)
p. 23
205

The Portrait Miniatures of Samuel Cooper (1607/8

Transcription

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