There is a great deal of truth to nature in Hoskins's work. Elsewhere I have termed his style virile and unaffected, and I do not know that I can find more appropriate epithets. At the same time, the justice of Walpole's criticism, that Hoskins is defective in colour, must be admitted. It is quite true that the carnations are too bricky, and wanting in gradation and variety of tint. This deficiency, which is a very serious one in miniature painting, depriving the flesh tints of their charm, may be traced in part to the medium employed. The amount of body colour used by limners of this period was so great, that the transparency of tone attained by later painters was impossible.
The work of the incomparable Cooper himself is not free from this defect, and we see it carried to excess both in the case of Cooper's master and in that of his pupil Flatman. All three are marked by a certain dryness of colour attaining to brickiness, only Cooper generally avoids the extremes into which the other two artists fall. This fault, it may be said, is characteristic of examples I have seen and possess.
The character of Charles I., whose melancholy visage Hoskins has drawn in a miniature now at Windsor, and here shown, is extremely well rendered. In the Duke of Rutland's valuable collection at Belvoir Castle there is an interesting portrait of Charles, when Prince of Wales, aged fourteen, ascribed to Hoskins, but infinitely inferior in the rendering of expression. Lord Carlisle owns, I believe, a replica of the last named. One of the finest examples of the master that I have met with is a portrait of Percy, tenth Earl of Northumberland, now in the collection of Lord Aldenham, and this nobleman also possesses a portrait of Elizabeth, wife of Frederick, fifth King of Bohemia.
The question has been raised whether there were two John Hoskinses, father and son. It will be noticed that in an extract from Graham which I have given he speaks of but one Hoskins, and those who argue that there were two appear to rest their contention mainly upon the foundation of a variation in the manner of signing the portrait. Thus the mark + is said to distinguish the works of the father from those of the son, which have I. H. simply. But if this be the test, then it may be urged that there were several John Hoskinses, since amongst the miniatures shown at Burlington House from Windsor, and by the Duke of Buccleuch, ascribed to Hoskins, there were the following different signatures: H. only, I. H. 1645, I. H. fc, I. H. (connected).
I am unable to give the date of the birth of John Hoskins, but he died in 1664, and was buried in St. Paul's, Covent Garden.