Chats on Old Miniatures

by J. J. Foster

ISAAC OLIVER.

SIR PHILIP SIDNEY.
(H.M. the King.)

There is a very beautiful miniature of this Elizabeth Claypole herself (she was, it will be remembered, the second and favourite daughter of Cromwell) in the Buccleuch Collection; and in the same connection may be mentioned the portrait of John Milton, which I have dealt with in the chapter upon Cooper.

The beauty and importance of the Coopers should not blind us to the interest of some of the Hilliards—for instance, the portrait of Alicia Brandon, the wife of Nicholas Hilliard, and a portrait of Drake, dated 1581, painted probably just after his return from circumnavigating the world. The great seaman's hair is dark brown, his moustache and beard a light auburn; he looks manly vigour personified.

I have spoken of Dixon as being a rare painter; there are, however, at least seven or eight by him in the collection I am now describing. He is not mentioned by Redgrave, it may be noted in passing; but he must have stood high in Court favour in his day, seeing that Charles II., Madame Hughes, Mary Davis, the Duchess of Portsmouth, the Duke of Monmouth, and Prince Rupert were among his sitters, and their portraits are to be found in this collection.

I pass on to another private collection also remarkable for the number and the superb quality of its examples of Samuel Cooper. It is that of the Duke of Portland. The Welbeck Collection is largely a family one, and so far as I know was never made as a collection pure and simple. But it contains, nevertheless, amongst the portraits that I shall proceed to mention, some of the very finest examples of Cooper with which I am acquainted. Four of these struck me as especially noteworthy, namely, Richard, Earl of Arran, John, Earl of Clare, Sir Freschevile Holles, and Colonel Sidney, afterwards Lord Romney. The latest of these works is dated 1668, four years before the painter's death. Cooper attained no greater age than sixty-three, and this may account for the absence of any discoverable decadence, even in his latest works.

Another marked feature in this collection, which is a large one, is the predominance of Laurence Cross and Bernard Lens; but Cosway and his school are scarcely, if at all, represented.

Another ducal collection, namely that at Belvoir, is important in respect of the historical miniatures it contains, and not the least valuable of these are miniatures of Sir Walter Raleigh and his son—he who was killed in the attack on the Spanish settlement on the Cayenne River, the story of which, and the beautiful enamel case which contained them, with its initials of Walter and Elizabeth Raleigh, is to be found in my book "Miniature Painters, British and Foreign," which also contains particulars of many private collections, described at considerable length and illustrated.

The Burdett-Coutts Collection is one of exceptional interest, inasmuch as it contains some of Horace Walpole's most treasured pieces. It is especially rich in the work of Peter Oliver, and hardly less so in that of Petitot fils. By the kindness of the late Baroness, this important collection was shown in the galleries of Messrs. Dickinson, in New Bond Street, when the group of the Digby family, after Van Dyck, and the separate miniatures of Sir Kenelm and his handsome wife, all the work of the younger Oliver, were especially admired; these are all shown in this volume. The Petitots, as I have said, are remarkable, and the two examples here given were highly valued by the dilettante owner of Strawberry Hill. Of the Henrietta, Duchess of Orleans, as beautiful as she was ill-fated, he says it is a "very very large and capital one, exquisitely laboured."