Courting Favour From Elizabeth I to James I
The Weiss Gallery, Summer 2017
Courting favour: Digital Edition

From Elizabeth I to James I Tudor & Jacobean COURT portraits, 1560 - 1625
E-CATALOGUE @weissgallery
SUMMER 2017
TABLE OF CONTENTS FOREWORD 4 1 .....................................................................................................................................8 Follower of Hans Holbein (c.1497/98 - 1543) 8 Lady Margaret Wotton, Marchioness of Dorset (1487 - 1541)
8
2 ................................................................................................................................... 11 English school, c.1560s 11 Queen Elizabeth I of England (1533 - 1603)
11
Hieronimo Custodis (fl. 1585 - 1593)
15
An Elizabethan courtier, possibly Sir Thomas Drake of Buckland Abbey,Yelverton (1556 - 1606)
15 15
3 ................................................................................................................................... 15
4 ................................................................................................................................... 19 Unknown Follower of Custodis (fl. 1592 - 1612) 19 Sir John Puckering of Kew, Surrey and Weston (c. 1544 - 1596), Speaker of the House of Commons and Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal
19 19
5 ................................................................................................................................... 23 Unknown Follower of Custodis (fl. 1592 - 1612) 23 An Unknown Gentleman
23
Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester (1532 - 1588)
25
Sir William Segar (c.1554 - 1633)
29
Sir William Fitzwilliam of Milton and Gainspark, later 1st Baron Fitzwilliam of Lifford (c.1570 - 1644)
29 29
6 ................................................................................................................................... 25 Attributed to Sir William Segar (c.1554 - 1633) 25 7 ................................................................................................................................... 29
8 ................................................................................................................................... 33 Marcus Gheeraerts II (1561 - 1635) 33 Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex (1565 - 1601)
33
Mary Senhouse (1572 - ?)
37
Robert Peake (1551 - 1619)
41
A lady, called Eleanor Wortley, Lady Lee, later Lady Manchester
41
9 ................................................................................................................................... 37 Robert Peake (1551 - 1619) 37 10................................................................................................................................. 41
11................................................................................................................................. 45 English school, c. 1600 - 1603 45 Anne Russell, Lady Herbert, later Countess of Worcester (d.1639), as a Maid of Honour to Elizabeth I
45 45
12................................................................................................................................. 49 Studio of John de Critz (c.1552 - 1642)
49
Anne of Denmark (1574 - 1619), Queen Consort of James VI of Scotland & I of England
49
13................................................................................................................................. 52 John de Critz (1552 - 1642) 52 Anne of Denmark (1574 - 1619), Queen Consort of James VI of Scotland & I of England
52
14................................................................................................................................. 55 Paul van Somer (c.1577 - 1622) 55 Sir Rowland Cotton (1581 - 1634) of Alkington Hall,Whitechurch, and Bellaport Hall, Shropshire 55
15................................................................................................................................. 59 Paul van Somer (c.1577 - 1622)
59
Elizabeth Wriothesley, née Vernon, Countess of Southampton (1573 - c. 1655)
59
16................................................................................................................................. 63 Anglo-Netherlandish school, c.1615 - 1620 63 An Unknown Gentleman in a Gorget
63
17................................................................................................................................. 65 William Larkin (c.1585 - 1619) 65 An Unknown Noblewoman in a feigned oval
65
William Larkin (c.1585 - 1619)
69
Lady Jane Thornagh (c.1600 - 1661)
69
18................................................................................................................................. 69
19................................................................................................................................. 73 William Larkin (c.1585 - 1619) 73 Thomas Trayton (b. 1562), of Lewes, Sussex
73
20................................................................................................................................. 77 Circle of William Larkin (c.1585 - 1619) 77 Christopher Cresacre More (1572 - 1649)
77
Henry Fredrick Stuart, Prince of Wales (1594 - 1612)
81
George Geldorp (c.1590 - 1665)
85
Martha Bertie (née Cockayne), Countess of Lindsey (1605 - 1641)
85
Footnotes
88
21................................................................................................................................. 81 Attributed to Constantino de’ Servi (c. 1554 - 1622) 81 22................................................................................................................................. 85
FOREWORD
As part of London Art Week, since The Weiss Gallery is synonymous with early British portraiture, we thought it only appropriate to put on an exhibition of Tudor and Jacobean paintings collated from our current stock. In conjunction with this, we have also produced our first ever e-catalogue listing all the works with high-resolution images and our research notes, which we hope you will enjoy. I would like to dedicate this exhibition to the memory of my late mother and mentor, Joan Weiss (1924 - 2017), whose unwavering support and encouragement had hitherto supported me throughout the last forty odd years.
~ Mark Weiss, June 2017
SUMMER
2017
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DETAIL FROM CAT. 2 4


CAT. 1
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COURTING FAVOUR
1 Follower of Hans Holbein (c.1497/98 - 1543) Lady Margaret Wotton, Marchioness of Dorset (1487 - 1541) Oil on panel: 30 ½ x 25 in. (77.5 x 64 cm.) Inscribed upper right with the Lumley cartellino Painted c. 1560 Provenance John, 1st Baron Lumley (c.1533 - 1609), Lumley Castle, Durham; Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford (1717 - 1797), Strawberry Hill; by descent to William 8th Earl Waldegrave (1788 - 1859), by whom sold, ‘Sale of the Valuable Contents of Strawberry Hill’, 17 May 1842, lot 78 (as a ‘portrait of Mary Tudor’); where acquired by Lady Charlotte Elizabeth Guest (1812 - 1895); by descent to Ivor Bertie Guest, 1st Baron Wimborne (1835 - 1914); sold 9 March 1923 to Dr Eduard Beith; Christie’s, London, 8 April 1938, lot 23, (as ‘The Duchess of Suffolk’, bt. Leggatt Bros., London); Ronald Nall-Cain, 2nd Baron Brocket (1904 - 1967), Bramshill Park, Hampshire; Sotheby’s, London, 16 July 1952, lot 46 (as ‘Mary Tudor’); Private Collection, USA; The Weiss Gallery, London, 1987; Dr. & Mrs Bonheim, Cologne, Germany. Literature Lionel Cust, ‘The Lumley Inventories’, Walpole Society, vol. VI, 1917, no.18, pp.15-29. David Piper, ‘The 1590 Lumley Inventory: Hilliard, Segar and the Earl of Essex’, The Burlington Magazine, July 1957, no.7, fig.13, pp.224-229. Mark Evans (ed.), Art Collecting and Lineage in The Elizabethan Age; The Lumley Inventory and Pedigree: Facsimile and Commentary, 2010, no.164, p.163.
The cartellino in the top right corner of this portrait establishes it as having belonged to the famous collector, John Lumley, 1st Baron Lumley (c.1533 - 1609). Lumley amassed one of the greatest art collections outside that of the Royal Court through a combination of inheritance, astute purchases and commissions. He owned paintings of almost all the notable figures of the Tudor dynasty, and his inventory of the collection, also known as the ‘red velvet book’ on account of its binding, and compiled in 1590, still survives today and stands as the single most important document for the study of art in Elizabethan England. Its significance lies not 8
~ From Elizabeth I to James I ~ merely in the fact that it is a comprehensive list of the largest private collection of its time, but for the number of paintings to whom artists’ and sitters’ names are given. Lumley had his paintings inscribed with a trompe l’oeil label as seen here, which usually bore the sitter’s name, their offices and dates, though notably not the artist’s name.1 This offers an insight into the importance then attached to a sitter’s identity over that of the artist’s. It suggests Lumley was more concerned with collecting a group of portraits of significant historical figures, rather than being concerned by their attribution. This is not surprising when considering how most of the painters at that time were considered no more than artisan guildsmen, and that few actually signed their works. Nor does Lumley seem to have minded if some of these portraits were later replicas, based upon earlier works. A recent dendrochronology of the panel for this portrait reveals an earliest tree-ring date of c.1556, so presumably it must have been painted after 1560. Lumley may have commissioned the painting himself, and certainly it would have been fairly new when he acquired it for his collection.2 Having left Lord Lumley’s collection, for many years this portrait was assumed to be of Mary I; however, the very closely related drawing by Hans Holbein the Younger in the Royal Collection, Windsor, inscribed as the Marchioness of Dorset clearly establishes that she is indeed Margaret Wotton.3 Other versions of the portrait are known to exist, and like the present work, are based on a lost original, presumably by Holbein. Three variants of our portrait, all identified as Margaret Wotton, are in the collections at Welbeck Abbey (Duke of Portland), Durnham Massey (National Trust), and the Beecroft Art Gallery, Southend. Margaret Wotton was the daughter of Sir Robert Wotton of Boughton Malherbe, Kent, and the widow of William Medley. She married secondly Thomas Grey, 2nd Marquess of Dorset (1477 – 1530).4 In 1533 she rode in Anne Boleyn’s coronation procession, and was one of two godmothers for Elizabeth I. However, by 1534 Margaret was openly engaged in a dispute with 5
her son, Henry Grey, 1st Duke of Suffolk, 3rd Marquess of Dorset (1517 - 1554), a rift that would ruin her reputation. She first quarreled with her son, who had succeeded to the Marquisate in 1530, when he was forced to pay a fine of £4000 for renouncing his betrothal to Katherine Fitzalan, daughter of the Earl of Arundel. As a punishment, she tried to restrict his allowance as he was technically still a minor, only agreeing to his marriage to his preferred choice, Lady Frances Brandon, niece of the King, on the condition that the bride’s father, Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk, supported the couple until her son came of age. In 1534 she finally offered to contribute ‘as my small power is and shall be’, but nonetheless Henry brought their dispute before the Kings’ Council, forcing her to admit that his allowance was not ‘meet or sufficient to maintain his estate’, and to offer to increase it. Embittered by the experience, she moved out of the Grey family seat at Bradgate House and died in 1541 at the age of fifty-four.
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COURTING FAVOUR
~ From Elizabeth I to James I ~
2 English school, c.1560s Queen Elizabeth I of England (1533 - 1603) Oil on panel: 17 ¾ x 13 ½ in. (45.2 x 34.4 cm.) Painted c. 1560s Provenance Acquired in London in the 1960s by Mary Hill Bishop (d. 1991), Chelsea Park Gardens; and by descent to Mary Kennard Perry (d. 2003), USA; and by descent to Private collection, Germany, until 2017. ‘Are you travelling to the temple of Eliza?’ ‘Even to her temple are my feeble limbs travelling. Some call her Pandora: some Gloriana: some Cynthia: some Belphoebe: some Astraea: all by several names to express several loves: Yet all those names make but one celestial body, as all those loves meet to create but one soul.’ Thomas Dekker, Old Fortunatus (1599)
Sir Roy Strong quotes this pean to Queen Elizabeth in Dekker’s court play of 1599, as a perfect summary of the Elizabethan ‘cult’ – the image she had carefully crafted and perpetuated through her reign.1 However, this rare early portrait of Elizabeth is notable for its life-like depiction of the queen early on in her reign – indeed before the construction of the Elizabethan iconography we associate with the Queen today. In other words, that associated with the ‘Rainbow’ and ‘Armada’ portraits in which Elizabeth was presented as a remote goddess and perfected emblem of her own self-fashioning; images where she perfectly embodied Statehood, Empire, and a God-given right to rule. The unknown artist who painted our more life-like representation makes use of the ‘Hampden’ portrait face-pattern. The Hampden portrait was an important full-length panel of the queen, made in the early 1560s. It was one of the first official court images of the young monarch from which a number of subsequent portraits including the present work were modelled. Infra-red examination of our version reveals careful under-drawing to define the contours of the face. Conservator Rosie Gleave of the Courtauld Institute of Art, has noted that our portrait is very likely cut down from a larger composition: ‘Physical evidence, including the presence of large dowels at the side of the painting… and later, roughly beveled edges, strongly 11
COURTING FAVOUR suggests that the panel was once a larger image. It may have been a ¾ or full-length portrait, in line with other version based on the Hampden portrait.’2 The Hampden portrait is thought to have been painted when Elizabeth was forced to address the issue of her marriage during the succession crisis of 1562/63. It is the only known image of the ‘Virgin Queen’ that alludes to the possibility of her becoming a wife and a mother: the background to the right of the portrait presents a portal into a brilliantly painted array of foliage, fruit and flowers, alluding to the queen’s potential fertility. She also holds a carnation in her right hand, traditionally a flower used in marriage portraits, while a rose is pinned to her chest. The rose was both the Queen’s flower, and an allusion to the Tudor dynasty, but also an allusion to Venus, goddess of love, and on the other hand, to Christ. Christ’s bride, perhaps, for she never would marry another. The ‘Hampden’ full-length was in an inventory of the Lumley collection in 1590, noted as by ‘the famous painter Steven’. That painter was long presumed to be Steven van der Meulen, an Anglo-Flemish artist active in England from around 1560. However, recent discovery of that artist’s will, written on 5 October 1563, dramatically reduced his potential oeuvre, bringing into question his authorship of the portrait of Elizabeth. It was suggested that ‘the famous painter Steven’ may well have been the Anglo-Flemish artist, Steven van Herwijck (c. 1530 – c. 1565), who was briefly active in England from 1562 – 1563; however, this hypothesis has been dismissed by scholars in the field.3 Stylistically, we can however assume that the artist of the Hampden portrait, and its associated versions, was very likely Anglo-Flemish. The costume Elizabeth wears in the present portrait is unique, and markedly different from the other Hampden versions. She wears a simple but rich red velvet dress, with high puff sleeves and an elaborate mesh of pearls and golden ‘spangles’ (sequins) across her partlet.4 This pattern is echoed in her hairpiece – a caul of netted gold cord adorned with pearls, covering the hair at the back of her head. She wears a high, dense ruff with contrasting gold edging. Our portrait also includes a tear-drop pearl and table-cut diamond pendant necklace, hanging from a string of pearls worn over the gauze of her partlet. All the other versions depict a dress with slashed sleeves, and a less sumptuously embroidered and bejewelled partlet. The present version is notable for the attention given to the costume, as well as to the face. Surprisingly, Elizabeth never appointed an official court painter, and she appears to have sat for only a handful of artists. Roy Strong pin-points only five specific artists that may have painted her through her reign – Levina Teerlinc in 1551, Nicholas Hilliard around 1572, Federico Zuccaro in 1575, and Unknown French Master in 1581 and Cornelius Ketel.5 The majority of her portraits were executed by anonymous artists working from court sanctioned prototypes, and of course there were many unauthorized images. In 1563, just over five years into Elizabeth’s reign, and presumably after the present portrait type had been disseminated, Sir William Cecil drafted a proclamation designed to control the production of the monarch’s image, forbidding further portraits of Elizabeth being made until an appropriate model (in the form of a face 12
~ From Elizabeth I to James I ~ pattern) could be provided to artists to copy from. After this, ‘hir Majestie will be content that all other painters, or engravers…shall and maye at ther pleasures follow the sayd patron or first portraictur’. 6 Later in her reign, in 1596, the queen’s Privy Council ordered public officers to assist in destroying ‘unseemly’ portraits – offering a further insight into a rather despotic and perhaps even vain desire to control her iconography.
Fig. 1 English school, c. 1590 - 95 Elizabeth I of England (1533 - 1603) Oil on panel: 36 ⅝ x 26 ¾ in (93 x 68 cm) Painted c. 1590-95 Previously with The Weiss Gallery. 13
COURTING FAVOUR
~ From Elizabeth I to James I ~
3 Hieronimo Custodis (fl. 1585 - 1593) An Elizabethan courtier, possibly Sir Thomas Drake of Buckland Abbey, Yelverton (1556 - 1606) Oil on panel: 30 x 24 ¾ in. (76.2 x 62.8 cm.) Inscribed upper left: ‘Fatto a tempo’ [‘done/ made in time’] by a device with a vase of gillyflowers on a grassy bank, and a sparrow An old wax collector’s seal [verso] with a Baron’s coronet above quartered arms including the Barons Carew of Clopton, Or three Lions passant in pale Sable, and a Pheon (a broad arrow head, a coat used by several families in several different tinctures) 1 Painted c. 1590 Provenance Presumably commissioned by the sitter, and to his daughter Elizabeth Bampfylde (1592 - 1631); by descent to the Barons Carew of Clopton, Devon (according to an interpretation of the wax seal); Private collection, Ireland, until 2015.
The sitter in our portrait may well be Sir Thomas Drake, younger brother of the famous explorer Sir Francis Drake, as identified by a pencil inscription, ‘Sir T. Drake’, on the reverse of its former old frame. Its provenance through the Barons of Carew of Clopton, Devon, would certainly allow this, as Drake’s direct descendant, Sir Coplestone Warwick Bampfylde, 3rd Bt. (c. 1689 – 1727), married into that family. Sir Thomas Drake was one of twelve children of a Protestant farmer from Devonshire, Edmund Drake of Crowdale (1518 - 1585), and his wife Mary Mylwaye (1520 - 1586). Due to religious persecution during the ‘Prayer Book Rebellion’ of 1549, the family fled Devonshire for Kent. There Edmund obtained an appointment to minister to men in the King’s Navy, and was ordained deacon and vicar of Upnor Church on the Medway. It was likely through their father’s connections that Thomas and Francis went to sea. The intriguing motif in the upper left corner depicts a vase of gilly flowers, a sparrow ‘nipping the bud’ of a gillyflower (carnation), above which is an inscription ‘fatto a tempo’, (‘done in time’, i.e., ‘just in time’). Though its exact meaning has been lost to us today, it certainly would have been understood by the sitter’s circle. We do know that a gillyflower, or ‘July flower’, was 15
COURTING FAVOUR generally used to symbolise marriage, and that Sir Thomas Drake married a widow some time between 1585 (the likely birth year of Elizabeth’s last son by her first husband), and 1588 (the birth year of Sir Thomas and Elizabeth’s first son, Sir Francis Drake, 1st Bt.).2 Could our portrait in some way be referencing their union? It is therefore perhaps not too fanciful to wonder whether their union was ‘just in time’. They are not the emblems of the Drake family, whose arms were Argent a Wyvern wings displayed Gules,3 and there is no mention of the motto ‘fatto a tempo’ in any of the contemporary printed books of mottoes both British and Continental. The choice of bird, crudely identifiable as a sparrow due to its ‘seed eating’ beak, nipping the bud of the gillyflower, is likely significant. Further supporting this dating, the artist, Hieronimo Custodis, was a protestant émigré from Antwerp who fled to England after the capture of the city by the Duke of Parma in 1585. His dated English works are from 1589 until his death in 1593.4 Our portrait may perhaps even have been one of his first English commissions. The simple, plain collar seen here, which replaced high, concertiaed collars and was a precursor to much larger cartwheel ruffs, was in fashion at exactly this time.
16
DETAIL FROM CAT. 3
COURTING FAVOUR
~ From Elizabeth I to James I ~
4 Unknown Follower of Custodis (fl. 1592 - 1612) Sir John Puckering of Kew, Surrey and Weston (c. 1544 - 1596), Speaker of the House of Commons and Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal Oil on panel: 35 x 28 ¾ in. (89 x 73 cm.) Inscribed upper left with the Puckering armorial Painted c. 1592 Provenance By descent to Margaret Austen-Leigh, Isel Hall, Cockermouth, Cumbria; thence acquired c. 1980s by Mary Burkett OBE (1924 - 2014), Isel Hall, until 2014.
This charmingly naïve and remarkably well-preserved Elizabethan portrait was painted around 1592 to celebrate Sir John Puckering’s appointment as Lord Keeper of the Great Seal to Queen Elizabeth I. The Lord Keeper discharged all duties connected with the great seal, and was usually a peer, with a fixed status which him entitled him to the same ‘pre-eminence, jurisdiction, execution of laws, and all other customs, commodities, and advantages’ as the Lord Chancellor. He was charged with physical custody of the royal seal itself, which was housed in the seal burse (purse) that Puckering is shown here so proudly holding, spectacularly rendered and embroidered with the Royal Arms of England. Originally of white leather or linen, by the end of the sixteenth century the burse was transformed into a magnificently decorated velvet purse. This example shows the crowned royal cypher and the letters ‘ER' (Elizabeth Regina) and a Tudor rose. Its heraldic design is set within a scrolling foliate border and its shimmering surface is achieved by the use of gold threads and silver ‘spangles’. Its elaborate design is a testament to the lavish tastes of the Elizabethan court. As a ‘perquisite' or ‘perk' of office the keeper was allowed to retain the old seal with its accompanying burse. Elizabeth I had five chancellors during her reign (1558 1603), each with a different burse for the Great Seal, so Sir John’s would have been gifted to him.1 The portrait can confidently be attributed to the Unknown Follower of Custodis, an artist first identified in 1969 by Sir Roy Strong on the basis of the recurring use of an identical form of inscription, as well as obvious stylistic characteristics.2 For biographic information on the artist, please see CAT. 5.
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DETAIL FROM CAT. 4COURTING FAVOUR Sir John Puckering (c. 1543 - 1596) was a man of modest beginnings, but raised himself to the highest civil office in the state.3 Admitted to Lincoln's Inn on 10 April 1559, he was called to the bar in 1567 and became an administrator and speaker of the House of Commons before being knighted and sworn in as a member of the privy council on 28 May 1592. When he was appointed Lord Keeper of the Great Seal he succeeded Sir Christopher Hatton who had died in November 1591. Perhaps unfairly Puckering was reported to be ‘in manners and appearance such a contrast to his gay and gallant predecessor [Sir Christopher Hatton] - he was so dull, heavy, and awkward - his whole deportment was so lawyer-like and ungenteel’. 4 Nonetheless, Puckering went on to entertain Elizabeth lavishly when she visited him at Kew in Surrey in 1595. With such expenditure, and while petitioning the queen for a grant of land in 1595, Puckering complained that as speaker he had lost £2000 from his practice, and that the lord keepership cost him £1000 a year. But like previous lord keeper to the queen, Sir Nicholas Bacon (1510 - 1579) and his successor Thomas Egerton, 1st Viscount Brackley (1540 - 1617), Puckering bought land on a large scale, acquiring the manor of Weston, Hertfordshire, in 1593, and further Warwickshire lands in 1596. He died intestate of apoplexy on 30 April 1596, aged fifty-two, and according to his memorial inscription, leaving ‘no regret of him.’5 He was buried in Westminster Abbey where his widow erected a substantial monument.6
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DETAIL FROM CAT. 4
COURTING FAVOUR
~ From Elizabeth I to James I ~
5 Unknown Follower of Custodis (fl. 1592 - 1612) An Unknown Gentleman Oil on panel: 22 3/8 x 18 ¾ in. (56.8 x 47.6 cm.) Painted c. 1590s Provenance Private collection, Germany until 2009; with Galerie Barnabé, Paris from 2009 to 2016.
This portrait has just recently been identified as belonging to a group of works by an anonymous artist working in the style of Hieronimo Custodis. The artist’s distinct hand was first identified by Sir Roy Strong in 1963 on the basis of the recurring use of an identical form of inscription and a characteristic, almost iconic artistic style consisting of a two-dimensional format and limited palate.1 2 The artist seems likely to have been an assistant of Custodis and perhaps even inherited his master’s pattern book. Though his work lacks the subtlety of Custodis himself, it has its own delicacy, as evidenced here by the extremely fine and detailed portrayal of the sitter’s privy seal. The small attributable corpus of the Unknown Follower was assembled by Strong and published in his seminal work The English Icon in 1969.3 This group of some eleven portraits include a pair of pendant portraits depicting Nicholas Wadham and his wife Dorothy Petre, the founders of Wadham Colege, Oxford.4 Although more limited in their colour palette, they bear comparison to our portrait as they share a strikingly two-dimensional format. Hieronimo Custodis himself was a protestant émigré from Antwerp who had fled to England after the capture of the city by the Duke of Parma in 1585. His dated works are from 1589 until his death in 1593, therefore our painter seems likely to have been an assistant of Custodis and perhaps even inherited his pattern book. However, more recently, Dr. Edward Town has suggested that an association with the Flemish born, but London based, Custodis is somewhat misleading. The pattern of this artist’s patrons and the location of many of his extant works suggest strongly that he was a provincial painter who worked in the Southwest of England from around 1590 to 1620. Due to the lack of inscriptions or family coat of arms it is not possible to be certain of our sitter’s identity, role or status. However, on the basis of costume, our sitter appears wealthy for he is well dressed and wears a fashionable ruff and tall black hat. This suggests that he is perhaps either from a merchant, artisan or professional elite.
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COURTING FAVOUR
~ From Elizabeth I to James I ~
6 Attributed to Sir William Segar (c.1554 - 1633) Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester (1532 - 1588) Oil on panel: 35 x 29 ¾ in. (88.9 x 75.6 cm.) Painted c. 1587 Provenance Possibly with Horatio Rodd, London, 1827; 1 Lady Heaton, Ipswich; Anonymous sale, Sotheby’s, London, 18 December 1968, lot 67 (as ‘English School 1520, Portrait of Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk’, sold £240); bt. by F.M. Carbonaro; Private collection, Italy.
This striking portrait of one of Elizabeth I’s most trusted and daring courtiers, Robert Dudley, derives from the prime three-quarter-length portrait of the sitter by William Segar (Private collection, previously of the famed Baron Lumley collection), thought to be the last ad vivum portrait of the Earl. A proud and successful figure in Elizabethan politics and court life, the 1st Earl of Leicester was, after the Queen, the most regularly depicted figure of his time. The number of portraits which survive reflect Leicester’s political importance and his boundless preoccupation with the propagation of his own image.2 Several other versions of the Segar portrait exist, ranging from bust to three-quarter-length, and can be seen at Hatfield House; Warwick Castle; Parham Park; Corpus Christi College, Cambridge; University College, Oxford; Penshurst and Knole. Ours is closest to that in the Marquis of Salisbury’s collection at Hatfield House. The type can be dated to c. 1587, after Leicester’s return to England from the United Provinces. In 1585, Elizabeth had entrusted him with the English army to assist the United Provinces in their struggle with Spain, but he showed such incompetence and so angered the Queen by his own adoption of the title ‘Governor of the Netherlands’ that he was recalled in 1587. Nonetheless, he was sufficiently in favour that only a year later, during the Armada crisis, Elizabeth appointed him Commander-in-Chief of the troops at Tilbury to oppose the Spanish invasion. He died suddenly in the same year, with some suspicion of poison. Here the Earl of Leicester can be seen holding the white lord steward’s staff (stave) in his right hand whilst his left hand grips the handle of his sword. Although Leicester was appointed the Lord Stewardship in 1584, it was only recognised on his return to England in 1587, thus 25
COURTING FAVOUR providing a terminus post quem for the portrait. A slight variation from the prime portrait, around his neck we see a long blue ribbon with the Order of the Garter of St George. His white satin doublet is embroidered with gold thread and punctured with black studded buttons. His large black velvet robe is lined with fur, possibly a souvenir from his time in the United Provinces. Robert was the second son of John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland and Protector of England during the reign of Edward VI. His father was executed for his part in the cause of Lady Jane Grey and the Wyatt insurrection. Dudley was tried on the same account but pleaded guilty and was imprisoned – though his life was spared. With the accession of Queen Elizabeth, Dudley’s fortunes rose. He was given a position in the Queen’s household as Master of the Horse, and was soon touted as a royal suitor. By 1561, with the death of his wife (in mysterious circumstances), he had become consort apparent. However, the marriage was never to happen and instead Leicester became, as a counter-weight to Lord Burghley, one of Elizabeth’s two most important members of Council. He was further rewarded with appointments as Knight of the Garter, Privy Councillor, High Steward of the University of Cambridge; then in 1546, Elizabeth created him the first Earl of Leicester. Having finally given up hope of marriage to the Queen, in 1578 he secretly married Lettice Knollys, the widow of Walter Devereux, 1st Earl of Essex; an act which resulted in Elizabeth’s furious displeasure. William Segar was a man of numerous talents; initially admitted to practice law at Gray’s Inn in 1579, his career took a slightly different path when he was introduced by Sir Thomas Heneage to the College of Arms and plausibly to Leicester. Here Segar would rise through the ranks, from Portcullis Pursuivant in 1585 to Norroy King of Arms in 1593 – apparently endorsed by Robert Dudley.3 It is surprising to consider that Segar was not far into his service at the College of Arms when Dudley requested that he join him in the Netherlands to serve as the Master of the Ceremonies in the earl’s St George’s Day festivities held in Utrecht in April 1586.4 Dudley had already employed him as early as April 1584, and it would seem likely that Leicester also wanted a capable portraitist to paint him at the height of his achievements. As Norroy, Segar carried the Sword of State in the funeral procession of Elizabeth I in 1603, and that same year he was made deputy Garter. He obtained a great seal patent confirming him as Garter in January 1607, was granted arms in 1612, and knighted on 5 November 1616 for his services in heraldry. That same year, his colleague and rival Ralph Brooke – York Herald – tricked Segar into granting a commoner arms so that he could masquerade around the continent as an English gentleman. Brooke reported this misdemeanour to James VI & I who then ordered the imprisonment of both Segar and his whistle-blower. They were released after only a few days on the assumption that both had learnt their lessons; Brooke to be more honest and Segar to be more wise.5
26
~ From Elizabeth I to James I ~ As well as being a painter and a man of noble office and importance, Segar published poems and writings that expressed his Protestant leanings. In terms of his artistic talents, he was contemporaneously regarded as one of the leading portraitists in England.6 According to an old photograph of the present painting held at the National Portrait Gallery’s Heinz library, there was once an inscription charged to the top left of the panel misidentifying the sitter as Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk and misdating the painting to 1520.
Fig. 2 Studio of Steven van der Meulen (c.1525/30 - 1563/4) Robert Dudley (1532/3 - 1588), 1st Earl of Leicester Painted c. 1560 – 1563 Previously with The Weiss Gallery.
27
~ From Elizabeth I to James I ~
7 Sir William Segar (c.1554 - 1633) Sir William Fitzwilliam of Milton and Gainspark, later 1st Baron Fitzwilliam of Lifford (c.1570 - 1644) Oil on panel: 72 x 49 1⁄2 in. (183 x 125 cm.) Painted c. 1595 Provenance By descent to his 2nd daughter Catherine who married Sir John Lee of St. Edmundsbury, Suffolk; Baptist Lee (1690 - 1768), Livermere Park, Suffolk; Nathaniel Acton Lee (? - 1836); thence to his sister Harriet who married in 1774 Sir William Fowle Middleton, Bt, of Shrubland Hall, Suffolk; Sarah Fowle Middleton, who m. in 1802 Sir Philip Bowes Vere Broke (1776 - 1841); whose grand-daughter Jane Anne m. in 1882, the 4th Lord de Saumarez of Guernsey; thence by descent at Shrubland Park, Suffolk. Literature Christopher Hussey, ‘Shrubland Park, Suffolk’, Country Life, 26 November 1953, p.137, pl.10 (as hanging in the library).
This is a rare surviving example of a late Elizabethan full-length portrait on oak panel, for by the end of the sixteenth century canvas had usurped wood as the support of choice for painters working on such a scale.1 The portrait can be dated on fashion to c.1595 and depicts the youthful William Fitzwilliam, the fifth in line of eldest sons all called William, dressed in the most extravagant and expensive of costumes.2 His great great grand-father, Sir William Fitzwilliam (d.1534), made his fortune in London as a merchant tailor, alder- man and sheriff of London. He was also treasurer and chamberlain to Cardinal Wolseley and, with the great wealth he amassed through trade, purchased vast acreage and many manors primarily in Northamptonshire and Essex. The fortunes of the family were to be further increased by Sir William Fitzwilliam (1526 - 1599), who served Elizabeth I as Lord Deputy and Lord Justice of Ireland. His father Sir William, who had married in 1569, spent thirty years at Elizabeth I’s court, but with the accession of James I retired to the country to manage his estates. His eldest son, our sitter, was probably born in the early 1570s not long after his father’s marriage. By 1593 he was 29
COURTING FAVOUR studying in Cambridge at Emmanuel College, and in 1594 he was admitted to Gray’s Inn in London to study law. As befitted a wealthy courtier’s son, he also took lessons in singing and dancing, as well as attending a fencing school, all at his father’s expense.3 William married Katherine, daughter of William Hyde of South Dunworth, Berkshire in 1603. After his father’s death in 1618, he inherited the family estates and in 1620 was subsequently given the Irish peerage of 1st Baron Fitzwilliam of Lifford. However, the loss of court grants and sinecures after his father’s retirement resulted in a substantial reduction in the family income from the State. Since Lord Fitzwilliam now lived a similarly secluded life on his country estate, and without the benefit of any official office, he gradually drifted into ever increasing debt. By 1642 he owed £20,450 with much if his estate mortgaged or sold. It was only through the judicious marriage of his eldest son to a wealthy mercantile heiress that, after his death in 1644, the fortune of the Fitzwilliam estates eventually recovered. In our portrait, the young Fitzwilliam proudly displays his great wealth and status by the gilded finery he wears. The whole costume is an elaborate construction of interlocking gold braid which has been plaited and sewn onto an underlying layer of slashed silk, a wildly expensive and laborious technique. The long-sleeved doublet is further embellished with a row of gold buttons and complimented by cuffs made of the finest lace. His costume continues with the matching paned trunk hose and knee-length canions (or breeches), below which his stockings are fastened with tied silk sashes. The multi-layered lace ruff is worn over an additional lace collar and over his shoulders is draped a velvet-lined cloak. Whilst only the elaborately decorated hilts of his dagger and sword are visible, the artist has taken great care to capture in excellent detail the belt and sword hanger, which again is embroidered with an ornate gold design. The gold watch prominently placed on the table beside him is of comparable expense to his costume. A mechanical marvel of the time, this portable timepiece was small enough to be worn around the neck or attached to the costume, and in many ways was a precursor of the modern watch.4 This example was probably made in France or Germany specifically for the English market.
30
DETAIL FROM CAT. 7
COURTING FAVOUR
~ From Elizabeth I to James I ~
8 Marcus Gheeraerts II (1561 - 1635) Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex (1565 - 1601) Oil on panel: 44 ¾ x 35 in. (113.7 x 88.9 cm.) In an early 18th Century carved and gilded frame Painted c. 1596 – 1598 Provenance Mr. and Mrs. Eric Bullivant, Anderson Manor, Dorset; their sale at Sotheby’s, London, 8 May 1974, lot 8; Anonymous sale, Christie’s, London, 15 November 1991, lot 4, (as ‘Attributed to Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger’); Mrs. Barbara Overland, Mont Pelier House, Jersey, until 2015.
This is a particularly fine example of a three-quarter-length variant that Gheeraerts and his studio produced, deriving from the artist’s famous full-length which has descended in the collection of the Dukes of Bedford at Woburn Abbey.1 That painting was commissioned soon after the earl’s triumphant return to England following the capture of Cadiz from the Spanish in August 1596. Our version has a terminus ante quem of 1599, when the earl was appointed Lord Lieutenant and Governor General of Ireland, after which other versions show the earl holding the baton of his office.2 In our portrait Essex wears a black velvet riding cloak, and the choice of the black and white costume is a clear allusion to colours favoured by Elizabeth I, alluding the purity of the Virgin Queen. As one of the most famous and recognisable of all Elizabethans, Essex was always well poised at court as the stepson of Elizabeth I’s favourite, Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, and given that his own mother, Lettice Knollys, was descended from Mary, the sister of Anne Boleyn. From the heights of his success as a favourite of the Queen, and the hero of Cadiz, his failures in Ireland and the enmities he created at court led to his catastrophic demise being imprisoned at the Tower and subsequently tried and executed for treason in 1601. Gheeraerts’ portraits of the earl support a description of him given in a letter by a Venetian visitor in England after the capture of Cadiz, as: ‘fair skinned, tall but wiry; on this last voyage he began to grow a beard, which he used not to wear.’ 3 Indeed, his distinctive red, square-cut beard became a trademark feature of his appearance. Devereux, much more than his contemporaries, quite consciously engineered his public image in an ambition to stand out from others, and the Gheeraerts commission can be regarded as a means of displaying his 33
COURTING FAVOUR achievements, capabilities and superiority as a prominent courtier.4 He was fully aware that portraiture was valuable in creating a lasting record of the most significant achievements of his career and by employing Gheeraerts he benefited from having his image projected by a leading artist. Essex recognised the value of presenting his portrait to friends and associates, and consequently numerous three-quarter and bust-length versions were produced. The existence of these abridged versions suggest that Gheeraerts must have run a workshop in which assistants contributed to their production. Leicester ensured that Essex was preferred in a number of important ways at court. He was appointed as a commander of the cavalry in Leicester’s expedition to Holland in 1585, distinguishing himself at the battle of Zutphen. He succeeded Leicester as Master of the Horse in 1587, and when his stepfather died in 1588, Essex was already highly esteemed by Elizabeth, appointed as a member of the Queen’s Privy council. In 1589, he took part in Sir Francis Drake’s English Armada, after the Queen specifically forbade him from going. He returned after the failure of the English fleet to take Lisbon. In 1590, he secretly married Frances (1567-1632), the widow of Sir Philip Sidney, but the marriage was only revealed when it became clear that the Countess was pregnant, in 1591. Shortly afterwards she gave birth to Robert Devereux, Lord Hereford (later 3rd Earl of Essex). They had two more sons and four daughters together, despite Essex’s dalliances with other women at court. Later that year, the Earl left to lead English forces in Normandy, alongside the army of King Henri IV of France, but returned unsuccessful in January 1592. He was a Privy Councillor between 1593 and 1595, during which time he focused on foreign policy, European intelligence gathering and correspondence. Enjoying a high public profile, Essex received as many dedications as the queen during the 1590s and was a key patron of portraiture, poetry and music, as well as being a poet himself. The genesis of the earl’s demise as a result of forthright and irresponsible actions began only a couple of years after he was painted by Gheeraerts. He was created Earl Marshal in 1598. That same year, however, after an argument with the queen over the choice of a new Lord Deputy of Ireland, he removed himself from court. In 1599, as the new Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Essex sailed there to command the queen’s forces against the Earl of Tyrone (as part of the Nine Years’ War, 1594 – 1603), but contrary to the monarch’s orders, conferred a large number of knighthoods on his soldiers, wasted funds, and garrisoned his men, all of which resulted in several defeats. Sensing that victory was no longer in his grasp, Essex reached a truce with Tyrone, independent of orders from the Crown. Although he was ordered not to return to court, he did, and was subsequently imprisoned. On 5 June 1600, Essex was charged with acts of insubordination whilst in Ireland and detained under house arrest, but granted his liberty on 26 August. Ruined, after the source of his basic income - the customs on sweet wines - was not renewed, disappointed and worried that the queen was being misadvised, following a controversial interpretation of Shakespeare’s Richard II, he led a band of three hundred men to march into the City in an attempted coup against the government. He had hopes of re-invigorating his position under the queen, as well as to 34
~ From Elizabeth I to James I ~ convince her to consider James VI of Scotland as her rightful heir. However, the gates were shut, and Essex and his core band of men were arrested. His actions were misinterpreted as an attempt to overthrow the monarch; thus he was tried for treason and condemned to death. Essex was beheaded at the Tower of London on 25 February 1601 – the last person ever to be beheaded there. It could be argued that Essex was one of the few courtiers to experience the dramatic extremes of being at once at the height of the Queen’s favour, close enough to be regarded as her lover, and then absolutely cut o, literally executed. His reputation posthumously, however, remained a good one, and recent historians have praised his military strategy, intelligence gathering and patronage of eminent scholars. The portrait once formed part of the notable collection of Elizabethan paintings formed by Eric Bullivant, including other important portraits by Marcus Gheeraerts and Robert Peake, works now in Tate Britain and the Yale Center for British Art.
35
COURTING FAVOUR
~ From Elizabeth I to James I ~
9 Robert Peake (1551 - 1619) Mary Senhouse (1572 - ?) Oil on panel: 35 1/16 x 28 3/8 in. (89 x 72 cm.) Inscribed upper left: ‘1605’ and upper right: ‘AEt. 33 .’ Provenance By descent to Margaret Austen-Leigh, Isel Hall, Cockermouth, Cumbria; thence acquired c. 1980s by Mary Burkett OBE (1924 - 2014), Isel Hall, until 2014.
Though the identity of this English gentlewoman has traditionally passed down the centuries as ‘Lady Mary Parker, née Senhouse’, in fact Mary Senhouse never married. She is depicted wearing a striking buff coloured satin dress with elaborate silver embroidery, buttons and spangles, though perhaps the conspicuous lack of jewellery may reflect her unmarried status.1 The attribution to Robert Peake, confirmed by Sir Roy Strong, is based on stylistic grounds as well as the distinctive script used for the inscriptions. Peake trained as a goldsmith but became one of the first native English portrait painters to achieve particular renown in his day, enjoying particular success a court painter during the reign of James I. By 1605, the date of our portrait, he had a thriving London workshop, and in June 1607 he joined the Flemish-born artist John de Critz as ‘Serjeant-Painter’ to the king. One wonders why an unmarried gentlewoman from Cumbria was painted by Peake in the first place – who at the time had an illustrious roll-call of patrons, and as far as we know only ever painted from his studio in London. One possible explanation is that Mary may have kept house for her chaplain brother, Richard Senhouse (d. 1626), who himself moved in elite circles, becoming chaplain successively to Edward Russell, 3rd Earl of Bedford, Prince Charles and King James I. The painting comes from a country house in Cumbria, Isel Hall, where it is thought to have hung from when it was first painted, until at least the early 20th century. The portrait was reacquired for Isel Hall in the 1980s by Mary Burkett (1924 - 2014), former director of Abbot Hall Art Gallery in Kendall.2 She had been working on a catalogue of all the portraits in Cumbria at the time she was bequeathed the property in the mid-1980s, and set about buying back works that had historic connections to the house.3 In a rather wonderfully titled book by William Hutchinson (1732 – 1814), from 1794, ‘The history of the county of Cumberland, and some places adjacent, from the earliest accounts to the present time: comprehending the local history of the county; its antiquities, the origin, genealogy, and present state of the principal families, with 37
COURTING FAVOUR biographical notes; its mines, minerals, and plants, with other curiosities, either of nature or of art…’, Isel Hall was noted under the parish of Isel’s ‘antiquities and curiosities’, in which ‘There are several good portraits of the family in the house…’.4 Little is known of the sitter other than her traditional identification as ‘Lady Mary Parker, née Senhouse’. This appears to have been a hybrid identification, muddled over time through the family’s subsequent generations; the Mary Senhouse whose dates fit with our sitter never married, (though there was a Mary Parker, née Senhouse who married in 1819). The Senhouses were a prominent Cumbrian family and Lords of the Manor of Ellenborough (also known as Alnborough).5 Mary was the twelfth child (of fourteen) of John Senhouse (c. 1540 - 1604), of Netherhall,6 and Anne Ponsonby of Haile Hall, Haile, Cumberland.7 Here, aged thirty-three, Mary wears a black cap and mourning thread around her neck. These were most likely in remembrance of her recently deceased father. Her sumptuous buff coloured dress is enough to tell us this is not a portrait of a widow, as for example, in Marcus Gheeraerts’s portrait of Elizabeth Finch in widow’s weeds (painted 1600, private collection).8 The full attribution of our portrait to Robert Peake, confirmed by Sir Roy Strong, is based upon the distinctive marking above the inscribed aged of the sitter at top right. In 1969 Roy Strong counted nineteen portraits bearing the artist’s inscription.9 The sitter too, has a rather elongated Peake-like face, with a typical distinctly modelled mouth and eyelids. There is, however, a strong stylistic resemblance between this painting and a number of works by his fellow artist John de Critz the Elder (1555 - 1641). Most strikingly, De Critz’s contemporaneous portrait of Anne of Denmark of c. 1605, (collection of the Earl of Haddington), bears an identical pose, with similar hand gestures, hair style and even certain aspects of costume. Specifically, both this and De Critz’s portraits have the fourth finger on the left hand tucked behind the middle finger. Though this type of gestural delicacy is common to noble sitters of the period, this specific link between two female sitters painted in the same year – one by De Critz and ours, by Peake - may suggest an intimate exchange of figural style. In any case, the placement of hands in the Anne of Denmark is of such importance that it was on this basis that Roy Strong attributed several other works to the artist.10 It is worth noting that in 1605, the year this portrait was painted, De Critz was officially appointed as ‘Serjeant-Painter’ to James I on the death of the artist who previously held the post, Leonard Fryer I (to whom De Critz had been deputy since 1603, already holding some of Fryer’s responsibilities). At this time De Critz was based in Shoe Lane in St. Andrew Holborn, where he would live until 1637. Although Peake and De Critz are not known to have ever shared a workshop, they were clearly more than familiar as colleagues. In June 1607 Peake joined De Critz as Serjeant-Painter, very likely as a result of De Critz’s loss of sight, which was recorded in 1609 when deponents at the King’s Remembrancer Court were asked ‘whether doe yow knowe or believe that John de Critz, until the tyme that his sighte fayled hym And Robert Peake nowe his Ma[jesty’s] Sergeant paynters be very sufficient & expert men in the art or science of paynting.’ 11 38
Fig. 3 Robert Peake (1551 - 1619) Elizabeth Stuart, Princess Royal (1596 - 1662) Painted 1603 Previously with The Weiss Gallery, now at The Queen’s House, Greenwich (National Maritime Museum).
Fig. 4 Robert Peake (1551 - 1619) Charles I, when Duke of York and Albany (1600 - 1648) Painted circa 1611 - 12 Previously with The Weiss Gallery.
~ From Elizabeth I to James I ~
10 Robert Peake (1551 - 1619) A lady, called Eleanor Wortley, Lady Lee, later Lady Manchester Oil on canvas: 81 ½ x 47 1/6 in. (207 x 119.5 cm.) Painted 1615 Provenance From the collection of Sir Henry Lee, 1st Bt. (d. 1632), of Quarendon, later Ditchley, Oxfordshire; thence by descent at Ditchley until at least 1732 (as recorded by Vertue, see literature); Private collection, France. Literature Lionel Cust, ‘Marcus Gheeraerts’, in Walpole Society, 1914, pl. XXIX. George Vertue, ‘Vertue Note Books’, vol. II, Walpole Society, vol. XX, 1932, p. 14, no. 9, & p. 76.
Eleanor Wortley was daughter of Sir Richard Wortley (c. 1565 – 1603) of Wortley, Yorks., and Elizabeth Boughton (1568 - 1642), and somewhat remarkably was married four times – firstly to Sir Henry Lee, 1st Bt. (d. 1632), and later Sir Edward Ratclyffe, 6th Earl of Sussex (c. 1559 - 1643); Robert Rich, 2nd Earl of Warwick (1587 - 1658); and lastly, Edward Montagu, 2nd Earl of Manchester (1602 - 1671). However, it seems likely that this identification is incorrect, as the sitter in our portrait is styled as a widow, when Eleanor Wortley still had a good fifteen years left in her first marriage to Sir Henry Lee. Not only can our portrait be confidently dated on the basis of costume to circa 1615, George Vertue in 1730 also records that the painting was dated 1615: ‘a Lady Widow in black falling ruff jewells about her neck kercher in her hand well dispos’d & painted. Hansom. Woman. (1615). 1 It is possible that an inscription with the date has since been removed or obscured, and notably a portrait with the same Ditchley provenance, and called ‘Elizabeth, Lady Tanfield’, by Robert Peake, bears an inscription with that date (now at Tate Britain T03031).2 That our portrait is connected to Ditchley, if not through Eleanor Wortley’s marriage to Sir Henry Lee, is clear. An alternative scenario, suggested by Edward Town, is that this painting came to Ditchley by virtue of Elizabeth, daughter and heir of Thomas Pope, 2nd Earl of Downe of Wroxton to Sir Francis Lee, 4th Bt. (1639 - 1667) of Quarrendon, Bucks. and Ditchley, Oxon: 41
COURTING FAVOUR the Popes were important patrons to Robert Peake and had a significant number of paintings by him at Wroxton. The sitter wears a coronet of pearls in the style typically only worn by a Countess of the realm. In consideration of her elevated status, she is presented in one of her grandest formal dresses and an extravagance of jewellery. The black satin dress is decorated with myriad slashing details and enhanced with abundant pearls sewn onto both the bodice and skirt. The skirt, left slightly unbuttoned, reveals a richly embroidered petticoat edged with a silver thread fringe. Long hanging sleeves billow out around the main sleeve, and are then attached and turned back at the elbow to reveal the contrasting white lining silk. In her left hand she carries a white handkerchief bordered with elaborate Flemish lace. Diamond encrusted jewels are pinned to her bodice and skirt and other jewellery includes a bejewelled gold chain inset with pearls and rubies, heavy ropes of pearls around her neck and wrists, while an array of fine jewels adorn her hair. Robert Peake, who was born into a Lincolnshire family around 1551, first worked as an apprentice to a goldsmith in Cheapside. In 1576, after becoming a Freeman of the Goldsmith’s Company, he went on to work for the Office of the Revels. There he was one of the six Paynters and others responsible for the preparations for the court festivities at Christmas, New Year, Twelfth-night and Candlemas in the winter of that year. Peake continued producing decorative work for the court for several more years until he was well enough established to start his own studio. By 1598, when he was recorded in Francis Mere’s Palladis Tamia, he was regarded as one of the most important painters then practicing in England. In 1607 Peake was jointly appointed with John de Critz as ‘Serjeant Painter’ to James I. His last known dated work is from 1616 and he died in 1619.3
42
~ From Elizabeth I to James I ~
Fig. 5 Follower of Hans Holbein the Younger (c.1497/98 - 1543) The Ditchley Henry VIII Painted c. 1610 Previously with The Weiss Gallery.
~ From Elizabeth I to James I ~
11 English school, c. 1600 - 1603 Anne Russell, Lady Herbert, later Countess of Worcester (d.1639), as a Maid of Honour to Elizabeth I Oil on canvas: 76 x 38 in. (192 x 96.5 cm.) Inscribed with the armorial of her husband Henry Somerset, Lord Herbert of Gower, [later 5th Earl & 1st Marquess of Worcester] (1577 - 1646). Painted c. 1600 – 1603 Provenance Sir William Barker, 4th Bt. (d.1818), of Kilcooley Abbey, Thurles, co. Tipperary; thence by descent within the Ponsonby family at Kilcooley to Thomas Ponsonby Esq.; with The Weiss Gallery, 2004; Private collection, UK. Literature Peter Somerville Large, The Irish Country House, 1995, plate 17b, p. 224; The Weiss Gallery, Icons of Splendour: Early Portraiture 1530 – 1700, 2004, no. 7.
This remarkable portrait is a rare representation of the spectacular excesses of court fashion during the final years of Elizabeth I’s reign, and a testament to one of the last great dynastic marriages of Tudor England. From the armorial, which was only uncovered during conservation in 2004, it was revealed that the sitter is Anne Russell, Lady Herbert.1 As a Maid of Honour to Queen Elizabeth I, she held a coveted position at court; attested to by the magnificently elaborate and specific costume that she wears. 2 Anne was the second daughter of John, Lord Russell (son and heir of Francis, 2nd Earl of Bedford) and Elizabeth Coke, one of the most formidable women of the Tudor age. Her elder sister Elizabeth, favoured as one of the Queen’s goddaughters, was also to become a Maid of Honour. Anne was married with great ceremony in the presence of the Queen on 16 June 1600 to Henry Somerset, Lord Herbert (1577 - 1646). The celebration of this marriage between two ancient noble houses has been one of the suggested interpretations of the renowned ‘Procession portrait of Elizabeth I’. In that painting Lady Anne may be identified as the young bride in white seen following immediately behind the Queen, born aloft on her bier.3
45
COURTING FAVOUR Her husband Henry Somerset acceded to the title of 5th Earl of Worcester in 1628. Later, during the Civil War, as a staunch Royalist and by repute ‘the greatest monied man of the kingdom’, the Earl was to advance Charles I vast sums to help finance the King’s cause.4 This support resulted in his being further ennobled as Marquess in 1643. Anne was to give birth to nine sons and four daughters, though all bar two sons and two daughters had pre-deceased her by the time she died at Worcester House in the Strand on 8 April 1639. Subsequently her body was buried in the Somerset family tombs at Raglan Castle in Wales. The only other surviving portrait of Anne depicts the sitter clearly a few years younger, at Badminton, the home of the 11th Duke of Beaufort, the current head of the Somerset family. 5 In the present portrait, Anne is shown wearing the hieratic costume associated with Elizabeth’s Maids-of-Honour. In particular, the serrated sleeves of her hanging gown and the distinctive head-dress composed of silver wire, spangles and pearls are found in comparable lateElizabethan portraits of other Maids-of-Honour; for example those of Catherine Killigrew (Ipswich Museum and Art Gallery), Lady Elizabeth Southwell (Cowdray Park) and Mary Fitton (Arbury Hall). The stomacher covering her bodice and large leg-of-mutton sleeves are examples of Elizabethan embroidery at its most grandiose – richly patterned with intricate motifs of flowers, fruit, birds and insects; all of which are overlaid with silk gauze woven a lattice of gold threads. She wears a triple chain necklace of gold and pearls, a large locket (for miniatures) encrusted with white diamonds suspended on a fine jet necklace, and an acorn shaped pouch that very likely contained her husband’s favour. In her right hand she holds a very fashionable and expensive ostrich feather fan, while tucked under her left arm, balancing on her spectacular farthingale skirt, is a small white lap-dog, likely a fluffy white Japanese chin dog (also known as a Japanese spaniel). These dogs were linked to Japanese nobility, and as such its inclusion alludes to rarefied trade connections, her noble status and, of course, fidelity. As it is well documented that Elizabeth made a practice of gifting clothes from her vast wardrobe to those women in her close entourage, such as the Maids-of-Honour, this may well the Queen’s own former gown.6 One can only imagine whether the splendid jewels might also have been gifted or lent by the Queen. The extraordinary clustered spinel or ruby pendant bunch of grapes, tied to her shoulder by a red silk ribbon, was clearly a very specific and surely important jewel, displayed here with obvious purpose, and in repetition of the extraordinary grape-vine motif embroidered in silver on her black velvet kirtle, or skirt. Alternatively, the embroidery may also be interpreted as a pattern of hops in silver thread, possibly correlating with a dress in a surviving inventory of Elizabeth I’s wardrobe made in 1600, and described as ‘Item one loose gown of blacke silke and sliver stitched cloth garnished with hopes of silver and black silk.’ 7
46
DETAIL FROM CAT. 11
COURTING FAVOUR
~ From Elizabeth I to James I ~
12 Studio of John de Critz (c.1552 - 1642)
Anne of Denmark (1574 - 1619), Queen Consort of James VI of Scotland & I of England Oil on panel: 18 7/8 x 15 3/8 in (48 x 39 cm) Painted c. 1605 Provenance Private collection, Sweden
This iconic royal likeness demonstrates the sheer courtly elegance of the sitter, who was known for her sensitivity to the latest fashion. Her upswept, formal hairstyle, which was fashionable in around 1605, marked a temporary elongation of the female appearance.1 In addition, her beauty was heightened by the many pearls which adorn her hair, ears and neck and mark her décolletage. She is wearing a figure-of-eight standing ruff, as well as a shorter, embroidered inner ruff. In spite of the sophisticated artificiality of his depiction, the portraitist introduced elements of realism: note, for example, the way in which the artist made a vein visible on the sitter’s temple. Anne of Denmark was born on 12 December 1574, at Skanderborg Castle, the daughter of King Frederick II of Denmark and Norway, and of Sophie of Mecklenburg. In 1589, at the age of fifteen, she formally married King James (then King James VI of Scotland) at Kronborg Castle in Oslo. Anne was crowned in the following year in the abbey church at Holyrood, the first Protestant coronation. By all accounts, Anne seems to have loved James at first, but the couple gradually drifted and eventually lived apart, although a degree of affection and mutual respect always remained. A further source of difference between them was the issue of religion; indeed she may have discreetly converted to Catholicism. In 1603, following the death of Queen Elizabeth I, James succeeded to the English throne as James I, and he and Anne were crowned together at Windsor Castle. Thereafter, Anne shifted her energies from factional politics to the patronage of arts, establishing a magnificent court of her own, which hosted effectively one of the richest cultural salons in Europe – she was particularly interested in court masques, which involved music and dance performances by members of the royal family. Anne commissioned the most talented artists of her time – such as Inigo Jones, or Ben Johnson – for the creation of her masques.2 Anne passed away aged forty-four on 2nd March 1619 at Hampton Court Palace, and was then buried in Westminster Abbey. Only three of the seven children whom she bore survived to 49
CAT. 13
COURTING FAVOUR
adulthood: Henry, Prince of Wales, Elizabeth and the future Charles I. Traditionally, historians have tended to dismiss Anne as a lightweight queen, who was self-indulgent, frivolous and trivial. Recent appraisals, however, have acknowledged her significance as a patron of the arts, as well as her assertive sense of independence as a woman.3 John de Critz the Elder is generally accepted as the painter of the first of the portrait types in oil of the new King and Queen. The artist was born in Antwerp in 1551/2 and brought to England as an infant. In around 1567 he was apprenticed to the Flemish Mannerist painter Lucas de Heere, who was then residing in England. It was probably de Heere who introduced de Critz to the statesman Sir Francis Walsingham, for whom he worked in Paris and perhaps in Italy. His training suggests that he was well aware of European Mannerism and of the school of Fontainebleau – two sources which may have been a driving force behind the highly mannered Elizabeth portrait style. In 1605, de Critz was granted the office of Sergeant Painter to James I for life, a post he was to share with Robert Peake from 1607 onwards. No signed or fully documented work by de Critz is known, it is therefore difficult to gauge exactly his personal contribution to the art of painting in England. However, since he was at the head of the most substantial artistic studio in London at the turn of the 17th c., his influence must have been seminal. He is recorded as painting royal portraits in 1606 and 1608. There are, however, two half-length portraits of James and Anne in the Uffizi in Florence, which are dated 1603. These were sent, along with another of Prince Henry, also bearing the same date and by the same hand, to Tuscany in that year. The portrait of James shows him with a simple jeweled adornment in his hat and not famous “Mirror of Great Britain”, a jewel made in 1604 which appeared in many subsequent portraits. In the portrait of Anne she is shown wearing the identical earrings and jewels in her hair, as well as similar costume decorations, as found in our portrait. From the start their portraits were clearly conceived to be pendants: each looks towards the other; James always looking to the right and Anne to the left – so our painting likely had a companion painting. This format remained the same for all the subsequently derived versions of all scales and, in the three-quarter length and full-length portraits, the backgrounds replicate the same patterned ‘Spanish gilt leather’ design. Unlike James, whose image remained unchanged from 1603 to 1618 and is readily recognisable, Anne was very fashion conscious and clearly enjoyed sitting for her portrait. The earliest, as here, show her with her hair piled high; then at around 1608/9, she changed her hair style to the familiar bouffant seen in later portraits. A close variant to the Uffizi portrait of Anne dated 1603, though not necessarily by the same hand, was formerly in the Nelson Atkins Museum. This bears the date 1605 and in this portrait the costume is even closer to our picture; again it depicts Anne wearing the same earrings. Among the early known portraits of Anne the three best ones are the pendant to the full-length of James at Loseley Park, the three–quarter length formerly at Tyninghame, and the threequarter length at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich (formerly with The Weiss Gallery).4 50
~ From Elizabeth I to James I ~
CAT. 13
COURTING FAVOUR
13 John de Critz (1552 - 1642) Anne of Denmark (1574 - 1619), Queen Consort of James VI of Scotland & I of England Painted c. 1612 Oil on panel: 44 ½ x 32 ¼ in. (113 x 82 cm.) Provenance Collection of Norman C. Lamplugh of The Old Court House, Hampton Court, Surrey; Sotheby’s, London (auction held at Hampton Court), October 18 - 19 1938, sold for £88; with Harold Davis, 39 King Street, London; Collection of Lady Audrey Morris (1910 - 1994); Sotheby’s, London, 19 January 1966, lot 162, as ‘Lady Arabella Stuart by F. Zucchero’; Private collection, England. Exhibitions Scottish Art and Antiquities, (Loan Exhibition) 27 Grosvenor Square, London, Feb-Mar 1931, no.1147 (illustrated, as by Paul Van Somer) Literature D.S. Meldrum, “Scottish Art and Antiquities,” from The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, 1st March 1931, Vol. 58 (336), p.133, as ‘Paul van Somer’s decorative panel of Arabella Stuart.’ Possibly ‘From the Saleroom’ from The Connoisseur, Vol. 102, 1938, p. 341. ‘Forthcoming Sales’ from The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs, Vo. 73, no. 427 (Oct., 1938), p. xxii.
Previously and erroneously described as depicting Lady Arabella Stuart, our painting can be confidently identified as an unrecorded portrait of Anne of Denmark (1574 - 1619), Queen consort to James VI of Scotland and I of England.1 Her father was King Frederick II of Denmark and Norway, and her brother was Christian IV of Denmark. In 1589, aged just fifteen she was married by proxy to James VI of Scotland, at Kronborg Castle in Oslo and was crowned Queen the following year in the abbey church at Holyrood, Scotland. By 1603, when James I ascended to the English throne, there were three surviving children from their marriage – Prince Henry Frederick, Prince Charles and Princess Elizabeth. Our painting dates a few years after the three-quarter-length portrait of the Queen painted by John de Critz now hanging in the National Maritime Museum, London (circa. 1609). In both 52
~ From Elizabeth I to James I ~ portraits the Queen is standing three-quarter-length in an interior setting, beside a chair behind on the right standing and decorative leather panels in the background. Whilst the costume details are similar, in our portrait the hairstyle has become more bouffant. Queen Anne wears a tightly boned low-neck bodice and farthingale skirt made of richly embroidered Italian silk, and trimmed with Italian reticella lace. There are seven different flower motifs featured in the scrolling embroidery design: sweet peas with pods, pansies, borage, columbine, rose, honeysuckle and ivy.2 Red ribbons adorn her hair and ribbon rosettes decorate her sleeves. In her right hand she holds a fan and in her left hand a lace handkerchief. For adornment, the Queen wears pear- shaped pendant earrings and a double string of pearls around her neck. Anne wore pearls more than any other jewellery – Scarisbrick describes how on the occasion of the wedding of the Princess Royal to the Elector Palatine, Queen Anne pinned some of her best pear-pearls in her hair and so impressed the Venetian ambassador, that he wrote they were the ‘largest and most beautiful...in the world.’ 3 The National Maritime Museum’s portrait is perhaps the finest of all the portraits of Anne to be painted in oils during the first half of her reign. Possibly painted ad vivum, it supersedes in quality all her other portraits hitherto attributed to John de Critz, as set out in the iconography of the Queen in 1969 by Sir Roy Strong,4 and in 1981 by Lucy Wood.5 Images of Anne of Denmark before 1603 are rare and attribution often obscure, however subsequent to 1603, following James’s assent to the English throne and the establishment of their courts in London, Anne was able to commission portraits from de Critz. This important early portrait, coupled with the discovery of our painting and affirmed by an identical version at Blickling Hall, Norfolk (National Trust), adds to the recorded oeuvre of de Critz’s work and helps to elucidate our knowledge of early Jacobean court portraiture.6 It is possible to date these earlier two portraits to c.1605, since by 1609 the Queen had changed her hairstyle from the high piledup hair to the more bouffant style seen in our portrait.
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COURTING FAVOUR
~ From Elizabeth I to James I ~
14 Paul van Somer (c.1577 - 1622) Sir Rowland Cotton (1581 - 1634) of Alkington Hall, Whitechurch, and Bellaport Hall, Shropshire Oil on panel: 43 x 34 ¾ in. (111.5 x 87.3 cm.) Inscribed upper right: ‘1618’ Provenance Presumably by descent within the Cotton family; Mr E. Peter Jones, his sale, Sothebys, 19 July 1961, lot 185, as ‘Sir Richard Cotton by Daniel Mytens’; Private collection, Antwerp, until 2014. Literature J. Arnold, Sir Richard Cotton’s Suit, The Burlington Magazine, 1973, vol. 115, pp. 326 - 329.
Remarkably, the splendid costume in which the sitter is so meticulously depicted, has survived the centuries, and today is in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. He is wearing one of the most resplendent costume pieces of this period and the silk doublet and breeches are virtuosically tailored with deep slashing on the doublet to reveal a layer of blue silk beneath. The costume is so exceptional that, not surprisingly, it was lovingly preserved by the Cotton family until it was gifted to the Victoria and Albert Museum by Lady Spickernell in 1938.1 Its magnificence is most likely due to the Cotton family’s background as merchant drapers in the City of London. Rowland would have been familiar with the wide range of fabrics and accessories on sale in the capital’s shops. The most expensive collection of shops with the most coveted fashionable goods were to be found in the Royal Exchange, in the City of London, close to the family home where he grew up.2 Sir Rowland Cotton (1577 - 1634) was an English politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1605 and 1629. He was the eldest son of William Cotton, a rich and prominent member of the Drapers' Company of London, who lived at a house called the ‘Redde Logge’ in Canwicke Street in the City of London. The young Rowland had grown up in his father's house in London, matriculated at St John's College, Cambridge c.1596 and was admitted to Lincoln's Inn in June 1599. His father had two elder brothers, both of whom were childless, so when Rowland's uncles both died around 1606 and his father in April 1608, he inherited family property consisting of land in Shropshire and Staffordshire, primarily at
55
COURTING FAVOUR Alkington in Whitchurch, the family seat, and Bellaport in the parish of Norton-in-Hales, where he himself chose to live.3 Whilst born and raised in London, Rowland did not follow his father into trade, being heir to the Bellaport family estates in reversion to his childless uncle John. He married firstly Frances, the eldest daughter of Sir Robert Needham of Shavington Hall, five miles from Bellaport. The Needhams were the premier landowning family in Shropshire and this facilitated Rowland’s political career. He was adopted by the mayor and burgesses of Newcastle-under-Lyne as their prospective member, taking his seat in the parliament of 1605-10. Following this, he was drawn into Prince Henry’s circle, although not as a formal member of the Prince’s Household, and is recorded as having been in one of the Prince’s masques, possibly as Oberon.4 In 1608 his wife died and it was to his acquaintance, Inigo Jones, that Cotton turned for a design for her tomb which still stands in the remote church of St Chad at Norton-in-Hales, Shropshire.5 He married secondly Joyce, the daughter and co-heiress of Sir Richard Walsh of Sheldesley Walsh, Worcestershire.6 He died in August 1634 aged 53 and was buried in the parish church at Norton-in-Hales, beside his first wife. He left no children and his estates reverted to his brother William on the death of his wife. Paul van Somer (c. 1577 – 1621), also known as Paulus van Somer, was a Flemish artist who arrived in England from Antwerp during the reign of King James I of England and became one of the leading painters at the royal court. He painted a number of portraits both James and his consort, Queen Anne of Denmark, and of nobles including Ludovic Stuart, Earl of Lennox, Elizabeth Stanley, Countess of Huntingdon, and Lady Anne Clifford. Paul van Somer (c.1577 1622).
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~ From Elizabeth I to James I ~
Fig. 6 Front and back of the costume, as seen in the present portrait, which is preserved at the Victoria & Albert museum, London.
We would like to thank Susan North, Curator of Fashion 1550 - 1800 at the Victoria & Albert Museum, for allowing us to photograph the costume.
COURTING FAVOUR
~ From Elizabeth I to James I ~
15 Paul van Somer (c.1577 - 1622) Elizabeth Wriothesley, née Vernon, Countess of Southampton (1573 - c. 1655) Oil on panel: 27 x 20 in. (69 x 50.8 cm.) Painted c. 1620 Provenance Halsway Manor Somerset, presumably in the collection of William Mitchell, c. 1924 – 1938; with William Cowlin & Sons Auctioneers, Clifton, Bristol; Raymond and Margaret Mead, by whom given to Alison Baker, June 1983; Private collection, U.S.A. until 2014.
Elizabeth Vernon was an oft-painted court beauty, and her iconography is impressive. Among her portraits is a spectacular full-length in The Buccleuch Collection, Boughton House, as a young girl, c. 1598, by an unknown artist, in a richly embroidered gown, brushing her long flowing hair, a sure reference to early portraits of the Virgin Queen, standing by a table with an open casket of jewels, her ermine-lined cloak and cartwheel ruff laid out on a bed beside her. It was clearly painted to celebrate her ‘coming out’ and appointment as a Maid of Honour to Elizabeth I. Another bust-length portrait at Boughton House from the circle of William Larkin shows her as a young woman, again with flowing hair and a richly embroidered bodice. The present portrait by the Flemish artist Paul van Somer, painted around 1620 when the sitter was a mature woman in her forties, is one of a number to adorn various English manors and estates, including three-quarter-length versions at Sherborne Castle and at Welbeck Abbey. She was also painted in 1622 by Marcus Gheeraerts, full-length (fig. 7), in a last great, glittering flourish of a style of full-length court portraiture that, by the late Jacobean period, had already become somewhat passé (with The Weiss Gallery, 1998, now in the Burrell Collection, Glasgow). 1 The most similar version of our portrait by van Somer resides in the National Portrait Gallery, London, also on panel. By 1620 the countess would have been very much in her prime at the Jacobean court, and van Somer has skilfully represented the artifice of Elizabeth’s wellpreserved powdered skin and rouged cheeks. She wears a costly black silk gown with slashes that reveal red and gold embroidered silk beneath, and a fashionable saffron lace ruff with matching cuffs and headdress. Her jewels are impressive, with a long double-strung quartz or 59
COURTING FAVOUR agate necklace on a red thread across her shoulders, with a diamond studded ‘S’ for Southampton, and a blue enameled miniature case to which she gestures with her right hand (presumably containing a portrait of her husband.2 Her earring is unusual, with red stones (rubies or almandine pyrope garnets) linked together and then looped up at each end for attachment and she has an unusual double-ear piercing.3 ‘Faire Mrs. Varnon [sic.]’ was in her youth one of the most celebrated beauties at court, chosen by Elizabeth I to be a Maid of Honour in chief. Several references to her occur in the ‘gossiping letters’ of the Elizabethan official and businessman, Rowland Whyte, whose epistles were first posthumously published in 1746 as Letters and Memorials of State, (ed. Arthur Collins), providing an insightful context to the latter stages of the Elizabethan court. In them he famously observed how ‘My Lord of Southampton doth with to[o] much familiarity court the faire Mrs Varnon’.4 Unsurprisingly, in 1598, on discovering she was pregnant, Elizabeth and her lover secretly married, to the ageing queen’s gravest displeasure. By 3 September she had learned of the marriage and consigned Elizabeth to the Fleet Prison. Elizabeth’s lover and spouse, Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton (1573 - 1624), is today renowned as William Shakespeare’s friend and patron, the dedicatee and ‘fair youth’ of his sonnets, and a cousin to Robert Devereaux, 2nd Earl of Essex. Elizabeth herself was the daughter of John Vernon of Hodnet, Shropshire, by his wife Elizabeth Devereux, whose grandfathers were the Viscount Hereford and the Earl of Huntingdon. Both her maternal grandparents were descended from King Edward III. On relegating Elizabeth to the Fleet Prison, the queen ordered Southampton (who at the time was in France) to return to England forthwith, but he remained in Paris for two months, losing large sums in gambling. By the beginning of November he was back in England, also lodged in the Fleet, where he remained for a month, during which time Elizabeth gave birth to their daughter, Penelope. After their release, the couple were never again received into the queen’s favour. Indeed, Southampton was deeply involved in the Essex rebellion of 1601, and in February of that year he was sentenced to death, later life imprisonment.5 Luckily for the couple, on the accession of James I in 1603, they resumed their place at court and received numerous honours. That Wriothesley had a love of literature is apparent not only through his patronage of Shakespeare, but also in a legacy of books which he bequeathed to the library of St. John’s College, Cambridge, described in a letter by Elizabeth to Dr. Owen Gwyn, Master of St. John’s, in August 1626, in which she noted ‘the great love and affection that my dearest lord, now with God… designed certain books unto the new library of your House…’.6 Elizabeth outlived her husband by over thirty years, and as late as 1647 Charles I, after his escape from Hampton Court, took refuge with her at Titchfield, ‘well knowing her to be a Lady of that Honour, and Spirit, that she was superior to all kind of temptation’.7 60
~ From Elizabeth I to James I ~
CAT. 16
Our portrait is known to have been purchased from Halsway Manor, Somerset, and it is likely that it came from the collection of William Mitchell who owned the house between 1924 and 1938. According to the Victoria County History of Somerset, Vol: V (1985), Mitchell appears to have been someone who enjoyed doing up houses, and acquired architectural furnishings for the house from several dierent sources. This would suggest that he also acquired objects with which to furnish the house, including the present portrait. The descent of the house does not suggest that it was acquired by any family with a familial connection to Elizabeth Vernon.
Fig. 7 Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger (1561 - 1635) Elizabeth Vernon, Countess of Southampton, 1622. Previously with The Weiss Gallery, now at The Burrell Collection, Glasgow. 61
COURTING FAVOUR
~ From Elizabeth I to James I ~
16 Anglo-Netherlandish school, c.1615 - 1620 An Unknown Gentleman in a Gorget Oil on canvas: 20 1/8 x 13 5/8 in. (50.8 x 34.4 cm.) Painted c. 1615 – 1620 Provenance The Hon. Geoffrey Howard (1877 - 1935), Castle Howard; with Spink & Co., London, 1934; bt. by The National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London; Christie’s, London, 15 December 1993, lot 4, as ‘Circle of Paul van Somer’ (£16,100); Private collection, USA. Literature E.H.H. Archibald (ed.), Portraits at the National Maritime Museum – Series I: 1570 - 1748, London 1954, pl. II, unpaginated, as ‘Sir Martin Frobisher’. E.H.H. Archibald (ed.), A Preliminary Descriptive Catalogue of Portraits in Oils, London 1961, unpaginated, as ‘Sir Martin Frobisher’.
This evocative portrait of an unknown gentleman in a richly embroidered doublet, a soldier’s gorget and fashionable dropped collar and pointed beard would suggest a date to around 1615 – 1620. The sitter was erroneously identified in the 20th century as the naval commander and explorer, Sir Martin Frobisher (c. 1535 - 1594), however by costume it was painted some twenty odd years later. The fine handling of the sitter’s face bears notable comparison to the work of the artist, Cornelius Johnson, and we are grateful to Karen Hearn for confirming that the artist for our portrait is indeed most likely to be an Anglo-Netherlandish painter working in England at the same time.1 It would appear the present portrait was once in a feigned oval, just visible in the lower corners of the painting, but that it has since been reduced. The effect created is of striking intimacy.
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COURTING FAVOUR
~ From Elizabeth I to James I ~
17 William Larkin (c.1585 - 1619) An Unknown Noblewoman in a feigned oval Oil on panel: 22 ¾ x 17 ¼ in. (57.8 x 43.8 cm.) With an old inventory number on a label, verso: ‘16112’ Painted c. 1615 - 1616 Provenance The Lords Willoughby de Broke, Compton Verney, Kineton, Warwickshire until presumably, 12 - 13 June 1924, ‘the property of Lord Willoughby de Broke’, on site, Woodley House, Kineton, Co. Warwick, including 47 pictures (as ref. Fritz Lugt); possibly Agnes Beryl Spencer-Churchill (1881 - 1948), granddaughter of 6th Duke of Marlborough; The Hon. Harold Miller Pearson, 2nd Viscount Cowdray (1882 - 1933); The Hon. Mrs. Daphne Lakin (1918 - 2015), daughter of 2nd Viscount Cowdray, Hammerwood House, Iping, Midhurst, Sussex, England; thus by descent until Christie’s, London, 7 July 2016, lot 1. Literature C.H. Collins Baker, Lely and the Stuart Portrait Painters, vol. I, London 1912, pp. 30 [illus.] & 77, as ‘Paul van Somer, Portrait of a Lady, c. 1612’.
This portrait of a noblewoman, with her piercing green eyes and almost white-blonde hair, is in remarkable state of preservation, the braille-like paint surface providing a superb and jewellike example of the work of the renowned Jacobean artist, William Larkin. It can be dated to around 1615 – 1616, after which the large cartwheel ruff fell from fashion. The sitter’s heavily embroidered and bejeweled black dress is cut very low, a typical feature of high Jacobean fashion, to reveal a pearlescent chest of milky skin and a maze of aristocratic ‘blue-blooded’ veins. Our portrait was published in 1912 by Collins Baker as by the Flemish émigré artist Paul van Somer (c. 1577 - 1622). At that time the portrait was in the collection of Richard Verney, 19th Baron Willoughby de Broke (1869 - 1923), at Compton Verney, Kineton in Warwickshire. Collins Baker compared it stylistically as an influence on another female portrait which he attributed as an early Cornelius Johnson, that of ‘A Lady, possibly Frances Cotton, Lady Montagu, of Boughton Castle, Northamptonshire’ - then in the Lords North collection at 65
COURTING FAVOUR Wroxton Abbey - but now in the collection of The Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, USA, and subsequently attributed to Robert Peake. Collins Baker even implied the two sitters may have been related.1 Whilst in terms of costume, colouring and hairstyle there is a synergy between the two works, they are clearly painted by different hands. Although the identity of our sitter has been lost over time, we are grateful to Edward Town of the Yale Center for British Art for noting the proximity of Kineton to Charlecote Park, the home of the Lucy family who were patrons of Larkin. Little is known of William Larkin's life and brief career, which was cut short by his untimely death in 1619, the same year that Nicholas Hilliard and also the Queen, Anne of Denmark, died. It is almost certain that he was the son of an innkeeper named William Larkin living in the parish of St Sepulchre, a close neighbour of the royal portrait painter Robert Peake, who very likely introduced the young Larkin to painting. Although Larkin never occupied an oďŹƒcial position at court, he is celebrated for his spectacularly decorative full-length portraits of members of the court of James I of England.
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~ From Elizabeth I to James I ~
Fig. 8 William Larkin (c.1585 - 1619) Anne Clifford, Countess of Dorset (1590 - 1676) Painted in the summer of 1618 Previously with The Weiss Gallery. Now in the National Portrait Gallery, London.
COURTING FAVOUR
~ From Elizabeth I to James I ~
18 William Larkin (c.1585 - 1619) Lady Jane Thornagh (c.1600 - 1661) Oil on panel: 44 ž x 33 in. (113.8 x 83.8 cm.) Painted 1617 Provenance By descent through the Thornaghs of Fenton and Osberton, Nottinghamshire to John Thornhagh (d.1787), of Osberton and Shireoaks, Nottinghamshire; thence to his second daughter and sole heir, Mary Arabella Thornagh (1749 - 1790), who married in 1774 Francis Moore (1749 - 1814), of Aldwarke, who inherited the estates of his uncle, Thomas Foljambe, and assumed the name Foljambe by Act of Parliament; Thence by descent with the Foljambes of Osberton to G.M.T. Foljambe, by whom sold Christies, London, 8 July 2008, lot 18; Private collection, England. Literature The Weiss Gallery, Tudor and Stuart Portraits: From the Collections of the English Nobility and their Great Country Houses, 2012, cat. no. 10. Exhibited Madrid, The March Foundation, The Island of Treasure: British Art from Holbein to Hockney, 5 October 2011 - 20 January 2012.
This exceptionally well-preserved portrait is one of the finest works on panel by William Larkin, the Jacobean painter who is most famous for his celebrated set of nine magnificent full-length portraits that descended with the Earls of Suffolk, and which now hang at Kenwood House.1 His exaggerated, iconographic style has been likened to miniature painting on a grand scale, reflecting a particularly English aesthetic. The intricately embroidered and brilliantly coloured costume is kaleidoscopic in effect. The motifs include sea monsters, maritime birds and flora, emerging from stylised silvery ripples of water on her skirt. Her bodice is decorated with crimson-crested woodpeckers, insects, grapes, and flowers punctuated by silver spangles and swirling patterns of golden 69
COURTING FAVOUR thread. They are depicted with painstaking attention and each brushstroke imitates individual stitches. The detail reflects the exquisite craftsmanship characteristic of Larkin, all the more noticeable for its execution on panel rather than canvas. Her loosely flowing fair hair is caught on the fashionably starched pale yellow collar, beneath which the neckline of her bodice scoops low to reveal a pearlescent chest of milky skin and a maze of aristocratic ‘blue-blooded’ veins. Larkin has depicted Jane with her right hand over her stomach, which could be an indication that she is pregnant with her first child Francis, who was born in 1617, the year of this portrait. The painting is in a remarkable state of preservation, with virtually all of its original glazes and impasto intact, allowing us to enjoy its dazzling surface and Larkin’s virtuoso technique, for he was an artist whose paintings brought the Elizabethan and Jacobean tradition of court portraiture to a brilliant climax during the second decade of James I. Before Larkin and the main body of his work were first identified, portraits such as this were ascribed to ‘The Curtain Master’, on account of their presentation of the sitter within draped curtains.2 These formalised swags of silk were a device he commonly employed to frame his subjects. The artist, or his studio, often replicated almost identical folds. Those used for Lady Thornagh are closely comparable to sections of the curtains found in the full-length of Richard Sackville, 3rd Earl of Dorset and Elizabeth Drury, Lady Burghley from the Suffolk collection. There are few records of Larkin’s life and brief career, which was cut short by his untimely death in 1619, the same year that Nicholas Hilliard and also the Queen, Anne of Denmark, died. He never occupied an official position at court, but we do know he was London-born. The provenance of our painting indicates that the sitter is very likely to be Jane, Lady Thornhagh. She was the eldest daughter of Sir John Jackson (b.1568) of Edderthorpe and Hickleton, a member of the council at York and an attorney to King James I, and his wife Elizabeth Savile, whose father had been a Baron of the Exchequer during the reign of Elizabeth I. Jane was married in around 1615 to Francis Thornagh (1593 - 1643), of Fenton. The Thornaghs3 were an influential Nottinghamshire family whose roots can be traced back to the 13th century when a Petrus de Thornhawe sat in the parliament of 1295 for Lincoln city. Her husband Francis was knighted the year of his marriage, and was to become High Sheriff of Nottinghamshire (1637 - 1638), a position his father had held, and that his son after him would also later hold. At the outbreak of the Civil War, siding with the Parliamentarians, he raised a regiment of horse to fight against the King through he died shortly after in April 1643. Jane retained the family estates at Fenton in dower, and continued to live there until her death in 1661.4
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DETAIL OF CAT. 18
COURTING FAVOUR
~ From Elizabeth I to James I ~
19 William Larkin (c.1585 - 1619) Thomas Trayton (b. 1562), of Lewes, Sussex Oil on panel: 21 1/8 x 15 1/2 in. (53.8 x 39.4 cm.) Inscribed and dated upper right: ‘AEtatis Suae 56. / June . 5 . 1618’ and with the Trayton family coat-of-arms, upper left. Provenance Private collection, Spain, until 2016.
This newly discovered, and hitherto unrecorded, small-scale panel portrait can be attributed with confidence to the Jacobean court painter William Larkin. Dated 1618 and painted only a year before the artist’s death, the portrait characteristically displays Larkin’s skill at capturing his sitters’ features with an accomplished technique and a rare psychological insight. The head is finely rendered, particularly around the eyes, however the handling of the detailing in the costume and lace is more freely executed than in his earlier works. The sitter, Thomas Trayton, alias Treton, of Lewes in Sussex, was a member of the household of Richard Sackville, 3rd Earl of Dorset (1589 - 1624), already an important patron of Larkin, whose family seat was at Knole in Sussex. That the painting is very specifically dated 5 June 1618, is therefore of some significance; for this was the summer that Larkin is recorded by Lady Anne Clifford (1590 - 1676) in her diaries as having visited Knole to paint her portrait and possibly to complete the portraits, of herself and her daughter, Margaret.1 In her diary for the period 1616 - 1619, Anne omitted the entire year of 1618, a period when she had lost a baby, but in January 1619 she began to record her quotidian life again, mentioning how she sent her portrait by Larkin as a gift to her cousin: ‘The first of this month I began to have the curtain drawn in my chamber and to see the light… The 16th… I sent my cousin Hall of Gilford [sic.] a letter and my picture with it which Larkin drew at Knole this summer.’ 2 We are grateful to Dr Edward Town of the Yale Center for British Art for suggesting it is very likely that Larkin found the time to also make a portrait of Trayton when he came to Knole that summer. Richard Sackville, 3rd Earl of Dorset, to whom Anne Clifford had already been married some ten years, had previously commissioned Larkin to paint his portrait at least twice in 1613 (The Suffolk Collection, English Heritage, and The Lord Sackville, Knole, Kent), and even owned a portrait of the artist which hung at his home at Buckhurst in 1619: 'Item 1 Picture of Mr Larkine the picture maker'.3 Trayton’s portrait could well then have been at the 73
COURTING FAVOUR behest of the 3rd Earl, making it a rare portrayal of gentry by Larkin at a time when he was otherwise predominantly painting the court elite. Town notes that the Sackville family must have been proud of their extended family and household, for the 3rd Earl commissioned a double portrait of the 1st Earl with his secretary (now at Sissinghurst).4 Thomas Trayton served as the Woodward (Keeper) to Thomas Sackville, 1st Earl of Dorset (1536 - 1608) - and went on to serve Robert Sackville, 2nd Earl of Dorset (1561 - 1609) – who only survived his father by a year - and after that, Richard Sackville, 3rd Earl of Dorset (1589 - 1624). Trayton was clearly a trusted senior servant, who in 1607 was responsible for providing an estimate for the repair of the Sackville house, Lord's Place, in Lewes. Notably, the previous year, on 10 June 1606, Trayton had been granted arms under the hands and seals of Sir William Segar, Garter (and notable Elizabethan artist); William Camden, Clarenceux, and Richard St. George, Norroy. 5 This is the only known portrait by Larkin on which he has included a coat-of-arms. The helmet has been highlighted with gold leaf, a clear reflection of the pride that Trayton had in his new found status in society. It is also relatively rare for Larkin to inscribe dates on his paintings, as here, and this too bears the remnants of gold. As identified by Dr Edward Town, the form of the inscription on our painting compares closely to those on the portraits of Richard Sackville at Kenwood and his daughter Margaret Sackville at Knole. Archives in Lewes that Trayton was a Constable in the years 1586, 1594, 1603, 1611 and 1617,6 and it interesting to note that his employer, Richard Sackville, 3rd Earl of Dorset acted as Lord Lieutenant of Sussex from 1612 - 1624.7 By November 1617 Sackville had sold Trayton land in Lewes in an attempt to service his debts. Clearly a man on the rise, in 1624 Thomas Trayton and his son Ambrose acquired the manor of Chalvington from the Sackville family for £600, with substantial outliers in Waldron and Folkington. Ambrose Trayton (1593 - 1679) had also married into the Chiddingly branch of the Sackville family and was buried at Withyham Church near the ancestral seat at Buckhurst. Thomas Trayton’s house in Lewes, Trinity House, still stands today. It was originally the site of the Church of the Holy Trinity which was owned by the Priory of Lewes until the 14th century. The building was in the occupation of the Trayton Family from the mid-15th Century to the mid-17th Century. During the Civil War, Thomas Trayton and his son Ambrose were Officers in the Parliamentary Forces of Sussex, and in 1642 the House of Commons authorised Captain Ambrose Trayton to raise a force of 200 men for the defence of Lewes. Now the site of a lawfirm, nonetheless the gable room in the west bay still contains the Armoury with racks for the pikes, hooks for the equipment and roots of ceiling rails for the uniforms which Ambrose purchased for his men and preferred to keep safely in his own house. Trinity House continued in the ownership of the Trayton family until sold by John Trayton Fuller to David Bayford, Doctor of Law, around 1770. 74
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Fig. 9 William Larkin (c.1585 - 1619) An Unknown Nobleman Oil on panel: 22 ¾ x 17 ½ ins (57.7 x 44.7 cm) Painted c. 1616 - 19 Previously with The Weiss Gallery.
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20 Circle of William Larkin (c.1585 - 1619) Christopher Cresacre More (1572 - 1649) Oil on panel: 44 3/8 x 31 7/8 in. (112.5 x 81 cm) Inscribed upper left ‘Ao 1611’ and ‘ACER CRESC animo CHRISTI FER MORE, labores/ Pictus ELISA ferit GAGEA hara tuum’ and upper right ‘AETA SVAE 38’ Provenance By direct descent to Thomas More, Barnborough Hall, Yorkshire; Sold by the executors of Thomas Peter More, October 1859, (Thomas Hollis?); Acquired by Colonel Charles Thomas John Moore Esq., of Frampton Hall (1827 - 1900) thence by descent to Valerie Tunnard-Moore, St. Peter’s Port, Guernsey. Literature G. Vertue, ‘Notebooks’, c.1720, Walpole Society, vol II, 1933, p. 75, where he noted at Barnborough Hall ‘a fine picture of Cresacre More.’
Christopher Cresacre More (1572 - 1649) was the great-grandson and biographer of the humanist scholar and statesman Sir Thomas More (1478 - 1535). 1 Most commonly known by his second name, the youthful Cresacre trained in France for the priesthood at the English college in Douai. However, his ambition to embrace an ecclesiastical career came to a halt in 1599 with the death of his eldest brother John (1577 - 1599). Instead he returned to England in order to assist in the continuation of the family line and, in 1603, he married Elizabeth Gage (1585 1610), sister of Sir John Gage, Bart, of Firle, Sussex.2 Upon his marriage, his father settled upon him the ancient family estate of More Hall, a manor situated in North Mimms in Hertfordshire. Like his father, Thomas II (1531 - 1606) who was repeatedly charged with recusancy at quarter sessions, at assizes, and in the archdeacon’s court, Cresacre remained true to his Catholic faith despite the heavy penalties and restrictions he and his family were forced to endure. In 1630, Cresacre published The life and death of Sir Thomas Moore, Lord High Chancellour of England, 3 with a special dedication to the Queen, Henrietta Maria, a leading supporter of the Catholic cause. Despite borrowing extensively from the earlier biographies by Thomas Stapleton (1588) and William Roper (1626), and adopting a more hagiographic tone in his introduction, the book is notable for the tender beauty of Cresacre’s account of the last days of the doomed Sir Thomas. 77
COURTING FAVOUR Our portrait, with its deliberately enigmatic inscription, depicts the sombrely attired Cresacre in mourning for his late wife Elizabeth who had passed away the year before, in 1610.4 The painting likely hung in More Hall, where it would have been in proximity to the renowned large group portrait of Sir Thomas More and his family, which he also owned and which now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery, London. Inspired by, and partly copied after Hans Holbein’s lost original, it was painted in 1593 by Rowland Lockey (fl. 1593 - 1616). The painting is a composite representation of five generations of the family, covering a span of about fifty years. Sir Thomas More is instantly recognisable (third from the left), with a beardless young Cresacre (second from the right) aged about twenty-one seen flanked by his parents, Thomas II (1531 - 1607) and Maria Scrope (1534 - 1607). Interestingly, Lockey was also commissioned to paint a miniature copy of the same composition, now in the Victoria & Albert Museum. It was likely painted a few years later, for Cresacre is depicted there with the beginnings of the beard and moustache that we find in our portrait.
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Fig. 10 English school, c.1700, after Hans Holbein the Younger Sir Thomas More (1478 - 1535) Previously with The Weiss Gallery. Ancestor of the present portrait’s sitter.
Fig. 11 Studio of Hans Holbein the Younger Lady Alice More (c.1474 - 1551) Painted circa 1530 With The Weiss Gallery.
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21 Attributed to Constantino de’ Servi (c. 1554 - 1622) Henry Fredrick Stuart, Prince of Wales (1594 - 1612) Pencil on paper, heightened with white chalk: 6 ½ x 12 1/8 in. (16.3 x 13.2 cm.) with pencil inscription (presumably 20th Century), verso: ‘Ottavio Leoni’ Drawn c. 1611 Provenance Possibly Christie’s, London, 3 June 1797, lot 28 (as ‘A pair, the Prince of Wales, and companion’) and purchased by P. Colnaghi, 132 Pall Mall, London; Private collection, France, until 2016.
This wonderfully intimate, and very sensitive portrayal of Henry Frederick Stuart, Prince of Wales, the ‘lost king’, was only recently discovered. Clearly drawn from life, and depicting him when a young man of seventeen or eighteen years old, it is likely to be one of the very last portraits that the heir to the British throne would have sat to in his lifetime. The prince’s iconography is somewhat limited, given his short life, and the finest portraits that have survived were done by the miniaturist Isaac Oliver, the most famous of which is a largescale work from c.1610 - 1612 (The Royal Collection, Windsor). The prince’s image was more widely disseminated through the portraits in oil done by Robert Peake and his studio from 1603 onwards when Peake was employed in the royal household as his principal ‘Picturemaker’. Our drawing has an informal, spontaneous quality quite different from the official images of the prince. Sketched at speed, and heightened with white chalk, it is executed with breath-taking delicacy and observation. The artist has conveyed with ease the prince’s characteristic spikey hair and has effortlessly captured his rather arch and confident expression, achieved with a raised eyebrow – further emphasised by highlights above. There is the merest suggestion of the prince’s ruff and doublet; this drawing concentrates on the prince’s face in all its immediacy. Clearly by the hand of a highly skilled draughtsman, the drawing is so accomplished it has previously been attributed to an Italian hand of the early Baroque – Ottavio Leoni (1578 - 1630). However, a more tantalising and indeed compelling attribution has been kindly suggested by Sir Roy Strong. Strong first wrote about the Florentine architect, artist and polymath, Constantino de’ Servi (c. 1554 - 1622) in his book Henry Prince of Wales and England’s Lost Renaissance in 1986. He observed that ‘of all the figures in the history of the arts in early Stuart 81
COURTING FAVOUR England whose importance needs to be re-examined, the Florentine… must rank as potentially the most important’. 1 Although de’ Servi today is little known, and his oeuvre is sadly unaccountable, he was extremely successful and highly regarded in his lifetime. His early artistic experience was developed in the grandducal Medici court of Florence in the 1570s. He trained initially as a painter under the principe dello studiolo, Santi di Tito (1536 - 1603), whose naturalistic style was also influenced by the likes of Agnolo Bronzino and Andrea del Sarto. We can only assume that de’ Servi must himself have been a talented draftsman. He spent some years as an itinerant artist, working in the service of the Cardinal of Austria in Innsbruck and Emperor Rudolf II in Prague. Most pivotally, he spent a period in the service of the French King, Henri IV, as ‘ingenieur du roi’. In September 1610, Prince Henry Frederick applied to Henri IV to release to his service the Italian artist brothers Tommasso and Alessandro Francini as part of his plan to reform visual arts in England at that time. However, due to other commitments to the French crown, rather than the Francinis, de’ Servi was instead made available to the prince, travelling to England in 1611. De Servi was firstly met by Queen Ann at Greenwich in the summer of 1611, who according to Ottaviano Lotti ‘takes great pleasure in the portraits from life he has painted for her’. Meanwhile the Prince ordered him to ‘make designs for constructing fountains, summer houses, galleries and other things’, but perhaps most tantalisingly, he ‘greatly pleased His Highness, of whom he is now executing a life-sized portrait and he is so disposed towards him that he comes to see him in his lodging.’2 Neither the portraits painted for Queen Ann, nor the life-sized portrait of Prince Henry by de’ Servi are known today, but it is a convincing theory that the present drawing may well be a preparatory sketch. Certainly the dating of the drawing based on the likely age of the sitter is compatible with the timing of the artist’s visit. De’ Servi went on to become pivotal in the re-designing of Richmond Palace, and in many ways usurped Inigo Jones and Salamon de Caus in the prince’s favour, even preparing a series of court masques to celebrate the marriage of the prince’s sister Elizabeth to the Elector Palatine. The untimely death of the prince in 1612 must have left de’ Servi in a precarious position. When at last the wedding of Elizabeth to the Winter King took place in February 1613, de’ Servi was responsible for the orchestration of a naval battle on the Thames. Transferring to the house of the prince’s great favourite, James, Lord Hay, later Viscount Doncaster, he continued to paint portraits, including one of Prince Charles and another, commissioned by the king, of his sister Elizabeth (both lost). However, he was critical of the lack of royal funding of the arts in the wake of the prince’s death and his last known British project was to act as designer for the court masque by Thomas Campion to mark the marriage of the notorious Frances Howard to Robert Carr, 1st Earl of Somerset at the end of 1613. The masque was reputedly a disaster, with machinery failing to work, and generally it was de’ Servi who was blamed. The next couple of years he very likely sought work abroad, and by 8 February 1615 de’ Servi was in The Hague in the service of Prince Henry’s friend, Maurice of Nassau and the States of Holland. 82
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Henry Frederick was born in Stirling Castle, Scotland on 19 February 1594, and was nine years old when his father James VI of Scotland succeeded to the throne of England as James I in 1603. Upon the accession, Henry was regarded as the long-awaited Protestant prince of the English Renaissance. A distinct court culture rapidly developed around him, projecting a chivalric yet erudite image to which Henry was willing to conform. By 1606, at the age of twelve, he made a brilliant first public appearance on the occasion of the visit of his uncle, Christian IV, King of Denmark. Profoundly and passionately interested in the arts, he formed the first royal collection in this country, and was the first to bring Renaissance bronzes into England including works by Giambologna. Had he lived, it is likely his court would have culturally been one of the most spectacular in Europe. Tragically however, in 1612 aged but eighteen, he died of typhoid fever. Such was the general and widespread grief at this untimely death of the heir to the throne that the funeral procession was made up of two thousand mourners, and the funeral – which was a cultural event in itself – was attended by many of the great and the good in Europe. In a long letter of eulogy written by Sir John Holles following the prince’s death, his virtues of character, as well as sporting and martial accomplishments, were extolled: ‘...in all things he affected regularity in his chapel, chamber, and household, was seldom angry, never gave foul word nor oath in his life...This excellently composed inside was accompanied with as well a built outside, an able, graceful body never wearied with labour, eminent in all princely exercises on horseback and on foot...’ 3 The loss of the heir to the Stuart throne was felt so greatly by the family, and indeed the country at large, that four years were to pass before his younger brother Charles was created the new Prince of Wales, a ceremony which his mother and Queen, Anne of Denmark, could not bring herself to attend.
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22 George Geldorp (c.1590 - 1665) Martha Bertie (née Cockayne), Countess of Lindsey (1605 - 1641) Oil on canvas: 79 ¼ x 50 ½ in. (201.3 x 128 cm.) Painted c. 1627 Inscribed (at a later date), centre-right: ‘THE RT. HONLE, THE COVNTESS/OF LINDSEY 1 ST . WIFE OF MOVN/TAGVE EARL OF LINDSEY LORD/GREAT CHAMBERLAIN OF/ENGLAND.’ Provenance By descent through the sitter’s fifth son, Charles Bertie of Uffington House, Lincolnshire; Albermarle, 9th Earl of Lindsey; 1 Montague Peregrine Albemarle, 12th Earl of Lindsey; Lady Muriel Barclay-Harvey (1893 - 1980); Property of the Will Trust of the Late Lady Muriel Barclay-Harvey, until 2014.
Martha, Countess of Lindsey was the daughter of Mary Morris and Sir William Cockayne (1561-1626) the first Governor of Ulster and a much respected Lord Mayor of London, and trusted confident of King James I.2 Cockayne was a scion of the Cockayne family of Ashbourne Hall, Derby and he amassed a great fortune and purchased numerous estates, including Rushton Hall. He gave each daughter £10,000 on marriage, a considerable sum in those days. Since her father was so well connected at court his daughter was able to make a good marriage and so Martha married, John Ramsay, 1st and last Earl of Holderness in July 1624, but sadly he died in 1625/6.3 Widowed and childless at 20 years of age, Martha, now Dowager Countess of Holderness, received a pension of £900 per annum from the Exchequer, in addition to an annuity of £1,000 per annum from her estates and a richly furnished house in Kingston-uponThames. 4 A very short time later, on 18 April 1627, she remarried to Montagu Bertie, 2nd Earl of Lindsey. 5 Martha was a very desirable bride as she brought much-needed funds to the financially troubled Berties at Grimsthorpe Castle, Lincolnshire. This second marriage elevated Martha to the pinnacle of wealth, privilege and influence for her second husband, Montagu Bertie, was a much-trusted aide to the King and, subsequently, many of their eight children married into other aristocratic dynasties.6
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COURTING FAVOUR Most probably painted in 1627, this portrait captures our rich heiress at a pivotal moment in her life: the year of her second marriage to Montagu Bertie. She wears a black over-gown with a bodice and skirt of embroidered oyster silk, tied with striped ribbon at the waist. This ribbon also keeps in place the paned and padded figure-of-eight sleeves known as ‘virago’ sleeves.7 As a truly fashionable English beauty, Martha has taken as much care in choosing her accessories as she did her dress; the large double-collar, the feathers in her hair, and a black ostrich feather fan completing her costume. She stands by a chair under a red canopy, and the landscape beyond shows a withered tree stump, perhaps a symbolic reference to her recently deceased first husband and their childless marriage. Our attribution to the Flemish portraitist George Geldorp (c.1590 - 1665) is based on stylistic comparison with the artist’s full-length portraits of his earliest English patrons William Cecil, second Earl of Salisbury, and his wife, Catharine Howard, painted in 1626.8 These pictures, now housed at Hatfield House in Hertfordshire, reflect a disposition of comfortable elegance shared with our portrait. The most notable similarity between the Hatfield portrait of Catharine and our picture are their near-identical environments: both are presented under a heavy velvet canopy before a blustery capriccio exterior. This is, one can assume, a recurring template that Geldorp designed to display his well-endowed sitters with appropriate grandeur and humility. The statically posed ladies in their grand conically-shaped dresses suitably dominate the compositions. It would be fair to say that relative to Catharine Howard, the Countess of Lindsey is presented more ostentatiously, in fitting with her higher status. Her lace collar is wider, she wears a costly chain across her chest, and the ribbons and rosettes on her dress are of blue and yellow family livery.9 This show of finery displays her very able means through birth and two marriages. The son of the painter Gortzius Geldorp (1553 - 1616), George Geldorp was born in Antwerp where he was admitted Master of the Guild of St Luke in 1610. He arrived in England in 1623 and built his career by working for the second Earl of Salisbury and his wife. The portraits that Geldorp painted during his early years in England are in an Anglo-Netherlandish style similar to that of his courtly-based contemporaries Daniel Mytens and Paul van Somer. Later in his career he supplemented his income by becoming an art dealer and seller of picture frames. It seems apparent in the latter stages of his life that he was creatively stifled, so much so he eventually became a sought-after copyist of works by Van Dyck for in June 1653 Richard Symonds saw an ‘abundance of Coppyes of Ritrattos of Vandyke’ in Geldorp's house. 10
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DETAIL OF CAT. 22
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Footnotes Cat. no. 1 1. The entry in the inventory reads ‘Of the olde Marquesse of Dorsett, syster to Sir Edw. Wooton’. The collection also included works quite certainly by Holbein’s own hand, including the famous portrait of Christine of Denmark now in the National Gallery (from which the cartellino was removed during cleaning). 2. Another example of a picture from his collection that was painted after the sitter’s death is a portrait from the 1570s of John, 2nd Lord Bray, who died in 1557 (Private collection, England). 3. See Karl Theodore Parker, The Drawings of Hans Holbein in the Collection of His Majesty the King at Windsor Castle, Oxford, 1945, p.43, no.28. (with whom she had four sons and four daughters). 4. Henry Grey was father to Lady Jane Grey (1536/1537 - 1554), whose brief claim to the throne lasted a mere nine days before her summary execution. Cat. no. 2 1. R. Strong, The Cult of Elizabeth, 1977, p. 15. 2. She also notes that the inscription to the upper background (now obscured, and which read: ‘The lady Elizabeth/ her picture when she/ was in the tower’), was a later addition: ‘It is not known when this addition was made, however, owing to the painting’s current composition, it seems likely that it was added after the panel was reduced in size – the cutting down of the panel, and later inscription, represent a significant change to the painting’s original appearance and function’. R. Gleave, CIA No. 2069 (treatment 2009 2011). 3. B. Grosvenor, ‘The Identity of ‘The Famous Paynter Steven’, The British Art Journal, vol. IX, no. 3, winter 2008/9, pp. 12 – 17. 4. In the 1560s English partlets were usually made of light-weight materials including satin, lawn, cypress and network, and frequently made with matching sleeves (Janet Arnold, Queen Elizabeht’s Wardrobe Unlock’d, 1988, p. 149). Embroidered sets of partlets and sleeves were sometimes given to Elizabeth as New Year’s gifts. Typically single women wore them open, and married women wore them closed. 5. See R. Strong, Portraits of Queen Elizabeth I, 1963. 6. J. Ashelsford, Dress in the Age of Elizabeth, 1988, p. 14. Cat. no. 3 1. We are grateful to the Royal College of Arms for their assistance identifying the seal. 2. They had three children – Sir Francis Drake, 1st Bt. (1588 - 1637), Elizabeth Drake later Bampfylde (1592 - 1631), and George Drake (b. circa 1593). 3. In heraldry a ‘wyvern’ was said to represent a flying serpent, an imaginary creature resembling the dragon, but having only two legs, like an eagle's, and a barbed, serpent-like tail. ‘Argent’ refers to the tincture of silver, and ‘Gules’ to the tincture of red. 4. Including the ravishingly beautiful portrait of Elizabeth Brydges at Woburn Abbey - see Strong, The English Icon, Elizabethan & Jacobean Portraiture, London, 1969. p.197, no.149. Cat. no. 4 1. Two burses from this period still exist: the first belonged to Sir Christopher Hatton which is in the V&A collection (Museum No. T.40-1986); the second is in the British Museum collection (Museum No. 1997, 0301.1) 88
~ From Elizabeth I to James I ~ 2. R. Strong, ‘Elizabethan Painting: an approach through inscriptions – Hieronimo Custodis’, The Burlington Magazine, CV, 1963, p. 104. Hieronimo Custodis himself was a protestant émigré from Antwerp who had fled to England after the capture of the city by the Duke of Parma in 1585; his dated works are from 1589 until his death in 1593 and include the ravishingly beautiful portrait of Elizabeth Brydges (Woburn Abbey). 3. He was the eldest son of William Puckering of Flamborough, Yorkshire, and his wife, Anne, daughter of John Ashton of Great Lever Hall, near Bolton, Lancashire. On 21 February 1569 he married Jane (d. c. 1599), and had one son, Thomas and four daughters. 4. Isel Hall was acquired by the Lawson family in 1572 5. J. Campbell, The Lives of the Lord Chancellors and Keepers of the Great Seal of England, Vol. II, p. 182. 6. British Library, Lansdowne MS 982, fol. 194. 7. J. Cole, engraving (after tomb effigy), repro. in J. Dart, Westmonasterium, or, The history and antiquities of the abbey church of St Peters, Westminster, vol. 1 [1723], p. 176. Cat. no. 5 1. We are grateful to Dr. Edward Town for his assistance with this attribution 2. R. Strong, ‘Elizabethan Painting: an approach through inscriptions – Hieronimo Custodis’, The Burlington Magazine, CV, 1963, p. 104; and R. Strong, The English Icon: Elizabethan & Jacobean Portraiture, London 1969, p. 349 (where the Burlington article was reprinted in the Appendix.) 8. R. Strong, The English Icon, 1969, pp. 207-214. 9. Ibid., nos. 166 & 168 and 167 & 169 respectively. Cat. no. 6 1. Catalogued as by Federico Zucchero: “Earl of Leicester, Robert Dudley, Favorite of Queen Elizabeth. Zucchero. Panel, 35 inches by 28; in a black cloak, trimmed with fur, a white satin waistcoat, collar of the order of the garter, hat and jewel &c. 18l. A very interesting portrait, and, except in the ornaments of the waistcoat, precisely like the picture of this Earl in the possession of the Marquis of Salisbury, at Hatfield.” Sold for £18. 2. Another portrait of the earl with numerous versions dispersed during Leicester’s lifetime is the type traditionally attributed to Steven van der Meulen (at Waddesdon, The Rothschild Collection, and at the Yale Center for British Art, and another version of which was recently handled by The Weiss Gallery). 3. E. Goldring, Robert Dudley Earl of Leicester and the World of Elizabethan Art, London 2014. p. 144. 4. Ibid. pp.144 – 146. 5. Anthony R. J. S. Adolph, ‘Segar, Sir William (c.1554–1633)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, April 2016 [http:// www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy2.londonlibrary.co.uk/view/article/25033, accessed 21 Oct 2016] 6. Ibid. Cat. no. 7 1. Dendrochronology by Ian Tyers has established that the five plank oak panel is from wood sourced from the eastern Baltic and that the average last tree ring dating of c.1570 suggests usage from between 1580 – 1610. 2. Without doubt the riches so ostentatiously displayed here would considerably have outweighed the cost of the painting. Very often, lands or estates were sold in order to finance a young nobleman’s attire when being presented at court for the first time. 3. Mary E. Finch, The Wealth of Five Northamptonshire Families 1540 – 1640, 1956, p.124. 89
COURTING FAVOUR 4. T.P. Camerer Cuss, The Story of Watches, 1952. 5. A similar drum-shaped German watch from c.1575 was formerly in the Atwood Collection and sold at Sotheby’s, New York, Fine Watches from the Atwood Collection, 11 December 1986, lot 7. Cat. no. 8 1. In the composition at Woburn, Essex is shown as a man of towering proportions, standing on a rocky cliff overlooking the sea, the sacked port of Cadiz burning beyond. In this way, with his baton of command in hand, Gheeraerts conveyed Devereux’s status as military hero and victor against the Spanish in the grandest manner. 2. Our portrait is one of a number of versions, including those at the National Portrait Gallery, London, Parnham House, Sussex, and Anglesey Abbey, Cambridgeshire. 3. F. Gradenigo to the Venetian Ambassador in France, CSP Venice, 1592 - 1603, 9.238. 4. Paul E. J. Hammer, The Polarisation of Elizabethan Politics: The Political Career of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, 1585 - 1597, Cambridge 1999, pp. 199-216, cited in Hearn, op cit. Cat. no. 9 1. Her unmarried status goes some way to explaining her lack of rings or ‘picture boxes’. Bejewelled pendant miniature boxes that often contained a portrait of one’s spouse. 2. Along with the portrait of Sir John Puckering by an Anonymous follower of Hieronimo Custodis (currently also with The Weiss Gallery). 3. During her long career, Mary Burkett wrote twelve biographies, expanded greatly the collections of the insititutions in which she was involved, and championed many local artists. Her correspondence was notable, including Percy Kelly, and even Stalin’s daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva (1926 - 2011). 4. Op. cit., p. 240. 5. For a family tree, see: https://archive.org/stream/historyofcountyo02hutc#page/268/mode/ 2up 6. John Senhouse was a keen amateur antiquarian, collecting inscribed stones from the Roman fort and civilian town lying along the coastal ridge above the Manor House, and as was the practice at that time, set them within the family mansion. Today the house is home to the Senhouse Roman Museum. h t t p : / / w c . r o o t s w e b . a n c e s t r y. c o m / c g i - b i n / i g m . c g i ? 7. S e e : op=GET&db=allerton_manor&id=I9283 8. Formerly among the Lenthall pictures at Burford Priory. 9. Roy Strong, The English Icon: Elizabethan & Jacobean Portraiture, 1969, London, p. 225. 10. Ibid., p. 264. 11. See E. Town, A Biographical Dictionary of London Painters, 1547 – 1625, The Walpole Society, 2014, vol. 66, p. 68. Cat. no. 10 1. Op. cit. p. 76. 2. We are grateful to Edward Town, Yale Center for British Art, for pointing this out. He also notes in an email dated 24.12.16: ‘The identification of the sitter [at Tate] as Lady Tanfield seems to be an early twentieth [century] suggestion, and I’d assume that the identification of your sitter…came at around the same time.’ 3. Mary Edmond, ‘New Light on Jacobean Painters’, in Burlington Magazone, vol. 118, 1976, p. 78.
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~ From Elizabeth I to James I ~ Cat. no. 11 1. Previously by repute the sitter was thought to be Elizabeth Throckmorton, Lady Raleigh. 2. Though not certain, it is likely that there were only six Maids of Honour at any one time. The duties of the Maids were not strenuous and seemed mostly to have involved accompanying the Queen during Court ceremonies and pageants. 3. For a full discussion of this painting see Roy Strong, The Cult of Elizabeth: Elizabethan Portraiture and Pageantry, 1977, pp. 17 - 55. 4. Clarendon, History of the Rebellion, vol. vi, p. 288. 5. Anne’s grandson Henry Somerset, 3rd Marquess of Worcester, was created 1st Duke of Beaufort in 1682. 6. At her death she owned over 2000 gowns. 7. See J. Arnold, Queen Elizabeth’s Wardrobe Unlock’d, 1988, p. 280, with reference to The Inventory made in July 1600 of all Clothes, Silks and Personal Jewels remaining in the Wardrobe of Robes at the Tower of London and within the Court at the Palace of Whitehall, Westminster, and other Royal Residences (or The Stowe Inventory) where it is listed under ‘Folio f.35v, no.87. Cat. no. 12 1. A similar hairstyle is visible in Marcus Gheeraerts’s portrait of Anne Vavasour (c. 1605), ill. in Valerie Cumming, A Visual History of Costume: The Seventeenth Century, London and New York, 1984, no.7, p.23. See also John de Critz’s Lady in Masque Costume as a ‘Power of Juno’ (1606, private collection), illustrated in Karen Hearn, Dynasties. Painting in Tudor and Jacobean England 1530 - 1630, Tate exh. cat., 1995, p.191. 2. C. McManus, Women on the Renaissance Stage: Anna of Denmark and Female Masquing in the Stuart Court (1590-1619), Manchester, 2002. 3. A. Stewart, The Cradle King: A Life of James VI & I, London, 2003. 4. The Weiss Gallery, Tudor & Stuart Portraits 1530-1660, 1995, cat. no.14. Cat. no. 13 1. Our portrait of Anne of Denmark is of a type which can be associated with the Serjeant Painter John de Critz. Portraits of Anne of this type were conceived to hang as pendants to ones of her husband James I. Anne is shown with her hair piled high, a style she kept until about 1609. See: Roy Strong. The English Icon: Elizabethan & Jacobean Portraiture. London, 1969, p. 264, ill. 249. 2. See J. Lea Nevinson, Catalogue of English Domestic Embroidery of the Sixteenth & Seventeenth Centuries, Victoria and Albert Museum, Department of Textiles, London: HMSO, 1938, p.78 3. D. Scarisbrick, Jewellery in Britain 1066 - 1837: A Documentary, Social, Literary and Artistic Survey, Norwich, 1994, p.118. 4. R. Strong, Tudor and Jacobean Portraits, London, 1969, vol.I, pp.7-10. 5. L. Wood, The Portraits of Anne of Denmark, MA thesis, 1981, Courtauld Institute. 6. Among the first portraits to be painted of Anne as Queen, the three finest are the pendant to the full-length of James at Loseley Park, the three-quarter- length formerly at Tyninghame, and the three-quarter-length at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich (formerly with The Weiss Gallery). Cat. no. 14 1. Arnold, op. cit. 2. A. Ribeiro, Fashion and Fiction. Dress in Art and Literature in Stuart England, London, 2007, p. 34. 3. F. Stackhouse Acton (1868), The Castle and Old mansions of Shropshire. (1868) Shrewsbury, Leake and Evans, p.38. 91
COURTING FAVOUR 4. R. Strong, Henry Prince of Wales and England’s Lost Renaissance, London, 1978. 5. J. Newman, An early drawing by Inigo Jones and a monument in Shropshire, 1973, Burlington Magazine, vol. 115, no. 843, pp. 360 - 367. 6. Sir Bernard Burke (1879), 6th ed., A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain. Vol.1, p.375. Cat. no. 15 1. See Illustrious Company: Early Portraits 1545 - 1720, The Weiss Gallery, 1998, no. 12. 2. The miniature case in the version at the NPG is in a red enamel, and her lace cuffs reveal further red and gold silk beneath. Otherwise, the portraits are near-identical. 3. We are grateful to Hazel Forsythe of the Museum of London for looking at her jewels. 4. Printed in the Sidney Letters, ed. Arthur Collins, referenced in R. W. Goulding, Wriothesley Portraits: Authentic and Reputed, Oxford 1920, p. 16. 5. On the eve of the abortive rebellion of Essex he had induced the players at the Globe Theatre to revive Richard II, and on his release from prison in 1603 he resumed his connection with the stage. In January 1605 he entertained Queen Anne with a performance of Love's Labour's Lost by Burbage and his company, to which Shakespeare belonged, at Southampton House. 6. Quoted in R. W. Goulding (ibid.), p. 17. 7. See R.. W. Goulding (ibid.), p. 17. Cat. no. 16 1. Karen Hearn has also suggested that the very stylised rendering of the embroidery on the doublet may be the work of another hand. Cat. no. 17 1. Op. cit., p. 77. Cat. no. 18 1. Of these, the costume of Lady Isabella Rich, with her low-cut bodice, pale yellow lace collar and red and blue mantle, is echoed here in this portrait of Jane Thornagh. 2. A pair of oval portraits of his patrons ‘Sir Edward Herbert (1583 - 1648), later 1st Baron Cherbury’ and ‘Sir Thomas Lucy (1584 - 1640’ at Charlecote Park (National Trust), referred to by Lord Herbert in his autobiography were first published as by Larkin by James LeesMilne, ‘Two Portraits at Charlecote Park by William Larkin’, Burlington Magazine, XCIV, 1952, pp.352-356. Sir Roy Strong subsequently was the first to assemble his oeuvre around these two documented works. 3. Most commonly spelt Thornagh, the name literally meant ‘thorn hedge’, a reversal of ‘hawthorn’, and was also sometimes written Thorney, and Thornaugh, probably deriving from the village of Thorney in Nottinghamshire, within a few miles of the city of Lincoln. 4. Their son and heir, Colonel Francis Thornagh (1617 - 1648) distinguished himself during the Civil War as one of the county’s most brilliant soldiers, becoming the Colonel of his father’s regiment. He would lose his life in action, fighting for the Parliamentarian cause against the Duke of Hamilton’s army at the battle of Preston in Lancashire, impaled by a Scotsman’s lance. Cat. no. 19 1. Diarist and patron of authors and literature; firstly wife to the 3rd Earl of Dorset, and later wife of the 4th Earl of Pembroke. Anne Clifford, The Memoir of 1603 and Diary of 1616 - 1619, ed. Katherine O. Acheson, Toronto 2007, p. 155. 92
~ From Elizabeth I to James I ~ 2. Anne Clifford, The Diary of 1616 - 1619, ed. Katherine O. Acheson, (op. cit.), p. 155. In 2013 The Weiss Gallery rediscovered the portrait of Anne by Larkin as mentioned in her diary and gifted to her cousin, Margaret Hall. It was sold to the National Portrait Gallery, London, where it hangs today. 3. See Edward Town, PhD thesis A House Re-edified: Thomas Sackville and the transformation of Knole 1605-1608, chapter 6: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?did=2&uin=uk.bl.ethos.554612 4. Edward Town, March 2014 at Knole at the ‘Understanding British Portraiture Seminar’, The Rake's patronage. He also notes the possibility that this is a Larkin product of c.1612, i.e. a posthumous portrait of the 1st Earl made from the established portrait type of c. 1600, with a new portrait of his secretary, John Suckling (1569 - 1627). It is not known whether Suckling remained in the service of the Sackvilles after the sudden death in 1608 of his patron, the 1st Earl of Dorset, though he received a gift of a jewel in a late addition to the latter’s will. See: http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1604-1629/member/ suckling-john-1569-1627 5. College of Arms Ms: EDN 57/399, blazoned as ‘Argent on a Bend Gules an Helmet in the dexter point Or the bever clos.e’A Bever or Beaver is an old term for the visor of a helmet. 6. The borough of Lewes was largely self-governing with a seal of its own and two constables chosen annually on the Monday after Michaelmas. A ‘court of all the town’, attended by the free and customary tenants and the lords’ officers, met twice a year, but day-to-day administration was exercised by the Twelve and Twenty-Four, bodies whose membership usually exceeded these figures. The constables levied a general rate to meet borough expenses, including the payment of parliamentary wages: the sum collected varied according to the need. Accounts kept by the constables survive from 1542. 7. The History and Antiquities of Lewes and its Vicinity, vol. I, T. Walker Horsfield, G.A. Mantell & J. Baxter ed., 1824, Lewes. Cat. no. 20 1. As Lord Chancellor of England, Thomas had famously objected to Henry VIII’s claim to be Supreme Head of the Church in England, leading to his execution at Tower Hill for High Treason in 1535. Although not formally beatified by Pope Leo XIII until 1886, Thomas was instantly considered a Christian martyr, and soon served as a potent symbol of religious and political resistance and loyalty for the recusant English Catholics, notably for his grandson Thomas II More (1531 - 1606) and great-grandson Christopher Cresacre. 2. It is recorded that in 1390 the manor was held by a certain John More. Sir Thomas More is said to have written his Utopia there. 3. 3A facsimile edition was printed in 1971 by Scolar Press, Menston, Yorkshire. 4. A smaller scale bust portrait of Cresacre, likely derivative from this portrait, was formerly with The Weiss Gallery and published in our 2004 catalogue icons of splendour as no 13. Cat. no. 21 1. R. Strong, Henry Prince of Wales and England’s Lost Renaissance, London 1986, p. 88. 2. Ibid., p. 91, Lotti to Vinta, 13 July 1611. 3. J. Nicholls, The progresses, processions and magnificent festivities of King James the First, his royal consort, family and court, London 1828, vol.II, p.33. Cat. no. 22 1. Uffington House, Lincolnshire, was built in about 1681 and burnt down in 1904 2. Cockayne was knighted on 8th June 1616 3. G.E. Cokayne (Ed.) The Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom, Extant, Extinct or Dormant, new ed., 13, page 516 93
COURTING FAVOUR 4. A. Chivers, ‘The Berties of Grimsthorpe Castle,’ Bloomington, Indiana, pp. 86-87 5. Montague Bertie (1607/8–1666) was a royalist nobleman and army officer. He was styled Lord Willoughby of Eresby in 1626—a name he bore until his father's death in 1642 6. Charles I hunted and dined with him in May 1633. The king latterly appointed him a gentleman of the privy chamber and awarded him a pension. See David L. Smith, ‘Bertie, Montague, second earl of Lindsey (1607/8–1666)’ From Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online ed., Jan 2008. [www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.londonlibrary.co.uk/view/article/2274, accessed 2nd March 2015] 7. A. Ribeiro, ‘Fashion and Fiction: Dress in Art and Literature in Stuart England.’ London, 2005, p.119. 8. Geldorp's original receipt for the paintings and frames reveals that the gilding was done by his wife. See Oliver Millar, ‘Notes on British paintings from archives: III’, Burlington Magazine, 97 (1955), pp.255–6. 9. Presumably that of her new husband’s family: the Berties. 10. British Library, Egerton MS 1636, fol. 93v
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