Portrait miniature of James I, watercolour on vellum, painted by John Hoskins, ca.1620-1625.

Miniature portrait, head and shoulders, turned slightly to right and looking to front. The sitter is wearing a ruff and has a blue ribbon over his shoulders. Features in short hatches of grey, brown and sanguine, with dark grey especially around the eyes and in the facial hair; some white heightening in the eyes; all on a very pale carnation ground; hair hatched in grey and brown with white lights over a pale brown wash; the ruff washed in pale grey and embossed with white; doublet in gouache washes with touches of gold, and silver in the buttons; background curtain in the flooded crimson manner (wet- in -wet); gold margin; on vellum put down on pasteboard.

Frame: A possibly eighteenth-century ebony portrait-box, each half of which is turned with a double rose on the reverse, the sides curving outward to an arris formed of a torus moulding with narrow fillets on each side; within each half, a screw thread in the sides and the flats turned with a series of torus mouldings culminating in a triple wavy-edged oval forming the opening for the miniature. In the other half is set, with no apparent iconographic point, a portrait of Catherine of Medici attributed to Clouet.

Provenance: Purchased from Mr H E Backer, October 1954; earlier provenance unknown.

This miniature was received in one half of a 17th century turned wood box: in the other half was a portrait of Catherine de Médicis by François Clouet (P.26-1954).

This portrait of James I was painted from life a few years before his death in 1625. It reveals something of the strain of the king’s uncertain and difficult life. Hoskins has caught the likeness of a man in his final years, the ageing around his eyes and the face drained of colour, which conveys a general air of tiredness.

P.27-1954