OLIVER CROMWELL.
(Duke of Devonshire.)
OLIVER CROMWELL.
(Duke of Sutherland.)
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."