This modest work is an important early miniature portrait by John Hoskins, who originally trained as an oil painter. This work is datable to about 1615 and shows the still dominant influence of Nicholas Hilliard (1547-1619). The red curtain background is typical for this time, a development of the flat blue background of Elizabethan (later 16th-century) miniatures. Red paint is laid in flat, but the artist then used a wet brush to lift the red paint in strokes, giving the effect of folds in a curtain. Hoskins has also painted the woman's pearl earring using Hilliard's jewelling technique. This involved laying on a raised blob of white lead paint with some shadowing to one side. This was then crowned with a rounded touch of real silver that was burnished with, to quote Hilliard, ‘a pretty little tooth of some ferret or stoat or other wild little beast’. This brought the silver to a sparkling highlight, while actual gold is used to paint the pearl’s gold setting. Silver tarnishes with age, and so this pearl now appears black. Twenty years later Hoskins was painting pearls and gold in a more painterly fashion, using white and yellow paint rather than actual gold or silver. This change was influenced by Charles I's court painter, Anthony van Dyck, who arrived in London from Antwerp in 1632.
Physical description
Portrait, head and shoulders, to front, of a woman with long loose hair, wearing a ruff and a low cut embroidered jacket; in her left ear she wears a pearl earring. Features delicately stippled in grey with some yellow hatching in the shadows, on a pale thick carnation ground; the hair in long wiry strokes over a pale opaque yellow wash; the dress and white ruff in pale brown embossed with white and with touches of metallic gold and silver; background a crimson curtain flooded wet-in - wet; a gold marginal strip; on vellum put down on pasteboard.
Frame: A relatively modern oval complex bolection moulding of fruitwood, stained dark brown; a Simple brown hanger stapled to the back.
Place of Origin
England, Great Britain (painted)
Date
ca. 1615 (painted)
Artist/maker
Hoskins, John (I), born 1585 - died 1665 (artist)
Materials and Techniques
Watercolour on vellum put down on pasteboard
Marks and inscriptions
'IH'
Dimensions
Height: 49.5 mm, Width: 39.5 mm
Object history note
Provenance: H E Backer, from whom purchased with funds from the R H Stephenson Bequest, August 1942.
Descriptive line
Portrait miniature of an unknown woman, watercolour on vellum, painted by John Hoskins, ca.1615.
Bibliographic References (Citation, Note/Abstract, NAL no)
Murdoch, John. Seventeenth-century English Miniatures in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum. London: The Stationery Office, 1997.
Cat. 19, p.46. Full Citation:
“19 Unknown Woman
c.1615
P6-1942
Oval 49.5 x 39.5 mm
Features delicately stippled in grey with some yellow hatching in the shadows, on a pale thick carnation ground; the hair in long wiry strokes over a pale opaque yellow wash; the dress and white ruff in pale brown embossed with white and with touches of metallic gold and silver; background a crimson curtain flooded wet-in - wet; a gold marginal strip; on vellum put down on pasteboard.
Condition: The flesh very faded; a small retouch in the forehead and some flaking in the dress; marginal abrasions.
Signed: In gold, centre left: IH (see A in Appendix 2).
Frame: A relatively modern oval complex bolection moulding of fruitwood, stained dark brown; a Simple brown hanger stapled to the back.
Provenance: H E Backer, from whom purchased with funds from the R H Stephenson Bequest, August 1942.
Literature: Accessions 1942, p. 41; Summary Catalogue, 1981, p. 31; Reynolds 1988, pp. 38-9, fig. 18.
This is an immensely important miniature showing Hoskins' style right at the beginning of his career. Curiously, it has been largely overlooked in the post-war literature, possibly because of its inherent modesty, or possibly because the anachronistic dark fruitwood frame detracts from the Hilliardesque, jewel-like character of the miniature. Recently, however, Reynolds in the new edition of English Portrait Miniatures (1) has related it to the group of very early Hoskins' miniatures at Windsor, and illustrated it as the prime exemplar of Hoskins’ beginnings.
The costume and especially the saffron dye on the collar point to the date of c.1615, earlier than almost any other signed Hoskins miniature but closely comparable in technique with the still Hilliardesque work of the 1620s (as in Cat. No. 20 [P.32-1941]).The form of the monogram is very exceptional, but may be explained by the equally exceptional rarity of such early work. The painting of the red-curtain background emphasises one aspect of Hoskins' dependence on the Hilliard-Oliver tradition, and the style of portraiture overall suggests that early in his career Hoskins may also have been close to William Larkin.(2)
1 Reynolds 1988.
2 See for example the portraits attributed to Larkin by Strong 1969, nos 345-8.”
Victoria and Albert Museum, Department of Engraving, Illustration and Design and Department of Paintings, Accessions 1942, London: HMSO, 1955.
The full text of the record is as follows:
HOSKINS, John (d.1665)
Miniature portrait of an unknown lady.
Signed with monogram IH.
On parchment on card. Oval.
P.6-1942
Purchased from the funds of the R.H. Stephenson Bequest'
Materials
Watercolour; Vellum
Techniques
Painting
Subjects depicted
Woman; Pearl; Ruff
Categories
Portraits; Paintings
Collection code
PDP
