Chats on Old Miniatures

CHAPTER V

NICHOLAS HILLIARD

As with other branches of art, so with miniature painting, we cannot show any native-born artists of eminence until we arrive at the middle of the sixteenth century, when the series of English miniature painters, properly so called, may be said to begin with Nicholas Hilliard, for we may disregard the one or two others whose names occur only in stray references.

Nicholas Hilliard, born at Exeter, it is said, in 1547, is the first English professed miniature portrait painter whose history can be given. His father was Richard Hilliard, High Sheriff of his county in the year 1560. His mother was a daughter of John Wall, goldsmith, of London, a circumstance which there can be little doubt had much to do with Nicholas Hilliard being brought up to the business of jeweller and goldsmith, occupations closely connected with limning in those days.

Assuming the date usually given for his birth to be correct, as to which I shall have something to say farther on, he engraved the Great Seal when he was forty years of age. This means that his reputation was already made – and indeed he had been appointed goldsmith, carver, and portrait painter to Queen Elizabeth, "to make pictures of her body and person in small compass in limning only." According to Pilkington, he owed his introduction to the Virgin Queen to the interest of Sir Walter Raleigh, but I have not met with any corroboration of this statement. It is also commonly said that Hilliard was enjoined to paint her Majesty without shadows. From what we know of the vanity of Elizabeth this is not improbable, though it is, to my mind, by no means certain; and there is another reason for the flatness of treatment which is undoubtedly characteristic of his work, which I shall deal with in considering his method of painting.

James I. granted him a patent to this effect: "Whereas our well-beloved servant, Nicholas Hilliard, gentleman, our principal drawer of small portraits, and embosser of our medals in gold, in respect of his extraordinary skill in drawing, graving, and imprinting, &c., we have granted unto him our special licence for twelve years, to invent, make, grave and imprint any pictures of our image, of our Royal Family, with power to take a constable and search for any pictures, plates, or works, printed, sold, or set up."

There is not much to be said about the career of Hilliard, and this work is not greatly concerned with biographical details. It must, however, be observed that Hilliard had an only son, Lawrence, who followed his father's profession, and enjoyed the patent granted by King James, until its expiration.

There is a warrant of the Council, dated 1624, extant, ordering the payment of £42 to Lawrence Hilliard for five pictures "by him drawn." Probably this privilege was a source of emolument to the Hilliard family (by the way, Lawrence had several children), and gave them control over the engravers and print-sellers of the period to whom licences were granted. Simon de Passe was employed by them in engraving small plates of the heads of the Royal Family.

Nicholas Hilliard died on the 6th of January, 1619, and was buried in St. Martin's in the Fields. He left to his sister, Ann Avery, £20 out of the £30 due to him as his pension. This, it will be remembered, is the same amount as Holbein's salary.

Works by Nicholas Hilliard are by no means rare. We have just seen that he lived to over seventy years of age, and was probably pretty fully employed during the greater part of his career, as is shown by portraits of James I. and his consort, Anne of Denmark, of which several exist.

Fourteen examples of his work were shown at the Winter Exhibition of the Royal Academy in 1879, of which four came from the Royal Library at Windsor. A still larger collection was exhibited at the Loan Collection at Kensington in 1865, and I have, at one time or another, examined a great many examples personally. It may be said of all these that they are characterised by uniformity of style, treatment, and quality.

We have Hilliard's own statement as to his artistic training: "Holbein's manner of limning I have ever imitated," he says, "and hold it for the best." Horace Walpole has remarked concerning this "manner of limning": "Although he copied the neatness of his model (Holbein), he was far from attaining that nature and force which that great master impressed on his most minute works. Hilliard," he continues, "arrived at no strength of colouring; his faces are pale and void of any variety of tints, the features, jewels, and ornaments expressed by lines as slender as a hair. The exact dress of the times he curiously delineated, but he seldom attempted beyond the head, yet his performances were greatly valued."

The paleness of the faces in Hilliard's work, as it exists to-day, is true enough, and would seem to justify the criticism of the owner of Strawberry Hill, and his statement that the painter "arrived at no strength of colouring," but before we accept the conclusion that his portraits always possessed the bloodless appearance they now present, we may ask whether it is by any means certain that they were originally marked by this defect.

It must be remembered that they were painted more than three hundred years ago, which is ample time for the flesh tints to have faded right out. We know how the carnations have flown in numberless examples of comparatively recent work, the ghastly paleness of which robs them of all beauty. The more perfect condition of the jewels and ornaments, with which the figures in Hilliard's pictures are so profusely adorned, is not conclusive, owing to the opaque nature of the colours and the quantity of gold he was wont to use. He commonly painted on card or vellum, and employed, it is said, a brush composed of hairs from a squirrel's tail. His works are generally signed "N. H.," and frequently have a motto and date written round the edge in Latin and abbreviated.

What is known as "quality" in works of art is a very elusive factor in their charm, and it is proportionately difficult to express in words. Indeed, I might go farther, and say that a large proportion of people who look upon works of art never realise what it means. Hence it is always difficult to assign with absolute fairness and accuracy the rank of a given artist.

There are many things to be taken into consideration, but I think it may be safely said of Hilliard that he stands well in the front of the second row of our native miniature painters. He is certainly inferior in finish and beauty to the Olivers, and his heads are even more deficient in the wonderful rendering of character and the masterly execution of Samuel Cooper, but his faces are well drawn, and are differentiated – far more so, for instance, than are the insipidities of Kneller and Lely and the early Georgian artists.

We know that he won the admiration of his contemporaries, both strangers and fellow-countrymen. In Heydock's translation of "Lomazzo on Painting," published in 1598, we are told that "limning was much used in former times in church books, as also in drawing by life in small models of late years by some of our countrymen, as Shoote, Betts, &c.; but brought to the rare perfection we now see by the most ingenious, painful, and skilful master, Nicholas Hilliard."

The ornate jewellery which he appears to have painted with such care was, of course, the fashion of the time, as were the elaborate ruffs, both of which are well shown in the accompanying portrait of Lady Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke – an extremely interesting miniature, by the way, which came from Penshurst. This lady was the daughter of Sir Henry Sidney, and married Henry, second Earl of Pembroke. It was to her that Sir Philip Sidney dedicated his "Arcadia." She died in her House at Aldersgate Street, and was buried in Salisbury Cathedral. She was the subject of the well-known epitaph by Ben Jonson: —

Penshurst Place, the charming old home of the Sidneys, possesses, or did possess, the portrait of the painter himself in his thirtieth year. It is probably also the background in the elaborate and beautiful miniature by Isaac Oliver, in the Royal Collection, which adorns this volume (see p. 295). From Penshurst, too, came the profile of Elizabeth given in this book. I refer to it here because it illustrates so perfectly what Walpole has said about portraits of Elizabeth, who, as we have seen, was certainly painted by Hilliard, and it is an apt criticism on the miniature painting of the time.

Fourteen Hilliards are specified in the above-named catalogue, including a view of the Spanish Armada. Four of these, portraits, and copies of older pictures, are now at Windsor, and were once attached to a gold and enamelled jewel, the work on which, it is surmised, was probably also Hilliard's, he being, as we have seen, the Court goldsmith; the portraits are those of Henry VII., Henry VIII., Jane Seymour, and Edward VI. The latter Van der Doort describes as "meanly done," "upon a round card." This remarkable example of goldsmith's work has on one side the roses of York and Lancaster and on the other a representation of the Battle of Bosworth Field. There are jewelled badges upon the dress and cap of Henry VII., and the miniature is dated 1509, the year of his death. In Horace Walpole's copy of Van der Doort's catalogue, it is noted: "The above jewel and pictures were done by old Hilliard, and given to the King by young Hilliard, by the deceased Earl of Pembroke's means."

It is possible, by means of the miniatures of Nicholas Hilliard, to realise the appearance of many of the personages of Tudor times, and of Elizabeth's Court in particular. Thus, in the Duke of Buccleuch's Collection is a portrait, on vellum, of Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset; he was the brother of Jane Seymour, uncle of Edward VI., and was beheaded on Tower Hill, 1552.

Also in the Buccleuch Collection is one of the most beautiful of this artist's works, namely, a portrait of Alicia Brandon, daughter of John Brandon, Chamberlain of the City of London. She was the wife of Hilliard, and was painted by him in her twenty-second year, 1578. The picture is charming from the vivacity of the features and its delicate execution. It is circular in form, signed N. H. (connected), and is preserved in a rose-turned case of logwood with an ivory circular rim. It was shown in the Royal Academy Winter Exhibition in 1879.

In the Colworth Collection there was formerly a portrait of Darnley, Earl of Lennox, thus inscribed: "Comes linoz ano Dni 1560 ætatis Suæ 18." I give this description as it is a typical instance of the

abbreviations one commonly finds on Hilliard's miniatures.

Mrs. Naylor Leyland owns a portrait of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, which is ascribed to Hilliard, and has a circumstantial history. It is said to have been given by the unfortunate Queen to one of her Maids of Honour on her marriage, from whom it descended to her grandson, the second and last Earl of Middleton, and thence to the present possessor. Of course, it is quite possible that this is the work of Hilliard, although most improbable that the painter ever saw her. In the case of another unfortunate lady of the period, namely, Arabella Stuart, the case is different, and he may quite well have had access to this ill-fated victim of the fears of James I.

Walpole possessed two of her, one when young, which may be that owned by the Duke of Buccleuch, representing her as a girl with a baby face. James I. and his wife were painted by him, as we have already mentioned, and one portrait of the Scottish Solomon was sold at Christie's for a very large sum. Of the courtiers of Elizabeth we have a number of well-known personages, Essex and Dudley, for example; of Drake when forty-two, in Lord Derby's Collection; and a portrait of George Clifford, Earl of Cumberland, Elizabeth's champion, dressed as for a tournament, in an enormous flapped hat, with a glove, the emblem of his office, fixed on the front of it. This picture is well known from the engraving by R. White.

At Kensington, in 1865, might have been seen Nicholas Harbon, Ambassador to Constantinople; Mrs. Holland, one of Elizabeth's Maids of Honour; Lord Keeper Coventry; Lady Hunsdon; and a portrait of the poet Spenser, which last is the property of Lord Fitzhardinge, and here shown.

CHAPTER VI

ISAAC AND PETER OLIVER, AND JOHN HOSKINS

Those of my readers who are able to agree with the estimate already advanced in this work as to the unique position held by Samuel Cooper in the ranks of British miniature painters, will be able to gauge the position which may be assigned to Isaac Oliver when they read Walpole's opinion of his powers. He expresses it in the following terms: "We have no one," says he, "to put in competition with Isaac Oliver, except it be our own Cooper." This is tantamount to saying that this painter, Oliver, was one of the greatest we have ever had, in his own walk of art. It must be remembered that there were two Olivers – Isaac the father, and Peter, his eldest son and pupil. Walpole could find no account of the origin of the family, but he notes that in the elder painter's pocket-book was a mixture of English and French, a point not without significance. The connoisseur of Strawberry Hill, whose opinions on art generally, and on his own magnificent collection in particular, are so interesting, and which we have so often quoted, states that the excellence of the elder Oliver was such that "we may challenge any nation to show a greater master"; and Peacham states that to Hilliard, in conjunction with Zucchero, has been given the credit of having instructed "a limner inferior to none in Christendome for the countenance in small."

The elder Oliver was born in 1555 or 1556. He died in his house at Blackfriars in 1617, the date of Raleigh's execution, and just a year after the death of Shakespeare. That he was at work till the close of his life is clear from the inscription upon one of the finest examples of his powers, namely, the portrait of the Earl of Dorset, formerly in the possession of Mr. C. Sackville Bale, sold at Christie's in 1880 for £750, and now one of the most valuable miniatures in the collection Mr. John Jones bequeathed to the nation, which is housed in the Victoria and Albert Museum. It is a full length, nearly ten inches high, and thus signed, "Isaac Olliuierus fecit 1616."

As in the case of other artists mentioned in this book, I do not think it necessary to dwell much upon the facts of their careers; what I think more important, and at least as interesting, is to give some idea of their relative ability, of the character of their work, and a more or less critical account of some accessible examples to be found in this country. That, amplified to an extent not possible in this volume, is what I set before myself in my preceding works upon Miniature Painters, and in practice I have not found any better way of treating the subject. So, then, we may disregard the biographical details of Oliver's life, of which, I take it, there are indeed very few to be gleaned. We have settled upon excellent authority his rank and qualifications as a miniature painter, and seen that he ranks as second only to the "incomparable Samuel Cooper."

Let us now turn to some of the principal known works of this admirable artist which have survived. Probably the largest number is to be found in the Duke of Buccleuch's magnificent Collection at Montagu House; but we may refer first of all to those in the Royal Library at Windsor, and begin with the celebrated full length of Sir Philip Sidney sitting under a tree in an arcaded garden, which some think conveys an allusion to the "Arcadia." It is shown on p. 295, and is reproduced on the exact scale of the original. This, with so many other of the finest of the old miniatures, was formerly in the Strawberry Hill Collection. It was sold at West's sale for the paltry sum of £16 5s.

We have evidence of four miniatures being painted for Charles I. when Duke of York, as is shown by an entry of payment by warrant in the office books of the Chambers, dated Lincoln, 1617: "To Isaace Oliver for four several pictures drawn for the Prince His Highness, Forty pounds." A profile of Anne of Denmark, now at Windsor, may be one of these, she being the mother of Charles I.; as may also be the portrait of Henry, Prince of Wales, his brother, which, according to Sir Richard Holmes, is the finest extant of that Prince. It is described in Charles I.'s catalogue as follows: "Number 17, done upon the right light, the biggest limned picture which was made of Prince Henry, being limned in the set lace ruff and gilded armour and a landskip wherein are some soldiers and tents, in a square frame, with a sheeting glass over it, done by Isaace Oliver, five and a quarter inches by four."

The interesting portrait of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, who was stabbed by Felton at Portsmouth in 1628, is probably a late example of the master, and is in his Majesty's Collection. It is figured on p. 126, as is also the interesting miniature of the artist himself in a tall felt hat (see p. 111), which we may conclude was the height of fashion of the period, there being one extremely like it in the National Gallery, worn by James I. The miniature here shown is also in the King's Collection.