Physical description
Head and shoulders oval miniature portrait of a man, turned to right and looking to left, his hair long and wearing a dark tunic with a white collar. In the right background is a view of a city - possibly London and the Tower of London. Features deftly and directly hatched in brown and sanguine, with some blue-grey shadow, on a thick, pale carnation ground; hair in brown wash, lined with darker colour and with gouache heightening; collar in white on pale grey wash, costume in black with lights in grey; background, a landscape washed and hatched in gouache; on vellum put down on a leaf from a table- book.
Frame: Seventeenth-century enamelled gold locket with a convex back covered with opaque pale blue enamel within a gold border; the inside partly counter-enamelled; the sides rounded and enamelled in the same pale blue, with the gold drawn up into a bezel which holds the convex glass; the hanger of inverted D-section, enamelled (much missing), and with a simulated knotted cord in pale blue and black enamel wound round its shank, making two symmetrical bows, the tapering ends passing through the bows and over the case in three undulations. A severe damage to the enamel at the base on the back and numerous losses. The front cover missing and points of attachment damaged or filed off.
Place of Origin
England, Great Britain (painted)
Date
1647 (painted)
Artist/maker
Hoskins, John (I), born 1585 - died 1665 (artist)
Materials and Techniques
Water-colour on vellum, put down on a leaf from a table- book
Marks and inscriptions
'IH 1647'
Dimensions
Height: 7.6 cm unframed, Width: 6.2 cm unframed
Object history note
The identification as John Wildman, the Leveller who rose to prominence in 1647 when he opposed Cromwell’s negotiations with Charles I, is based on its direct relationship with an engraving by Wenceslaus Hollar, dated 1653 (George Vertue, Hollar, 1745, p.72; Gustav Parthey, Hollar, 1853, p.385, no.1697). The early impressions bear no name, but from the second half of the 18th century the engraving became known as a portrait of Wildman (see the Rev. James Granger, Biographical History of England, 1774, Supplement p.296; 1824, illustrated ed. Vol. II, part III, p.207).
Provenance: Miss Armorel Carey in 1946; sold by private treaty to the Museum, February 1962.
Descriptive line
Portrait miniature of a man, perhaps Sir John Wildman, watercolour on vellum, painted by John Hoskins, 1647.
Bibliographic References (Citation, Note/Abstract, NAL no)
Victoria & Albert Museum Department of Prints and Drawings and Department of Paintings, Accessions 1962. London: HMSO, 1964.
The full text of the entry is as follows:
"HOSKINS, John (died 1665)
Miniature portrait of a man thought to be Sir John Wildman (1621?-1693).
Signed and dated IH 1647.
On vellum on card. Oval 7.6 x 6 cm. P.2-1962
Purchased with the aid of a contribution from the funds of the R. H. Stephenson Bequest
Note: The identification as John Wildman, the Leveller who rose to prominence in 1647 when he opposed Cromwell's negotiations with Charles I, is based on its direct relationship with an engraving by Wenzel Hollar, dated 1653 (George Vertue, Hollar, 1745, p.72; Gustav Parthey, Hollar, 1853, p.385, no.1697). The early impressions bear no name, but from the second half of the 18th century the engraving became known as a portrait of Wildman (see the Rev. James Granger, Biographical History of England, 1774, Supplement p.296; 1824, illustrated ed. Vol. II, part III, p.207)."
Murdoch, John. Seventeenth-century English Miniatures in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum. London: The Stationery Office, 1997.
Cat.33, pp.66-67. Full Citation:
"33 A Man, perhaps Sir John Wildman
(b.?1621 d.1693)
1647
P2-1962
Oval 76 x 61.5 mm
Features deftly and directly hatched in brown and sanguine, with some blue-grey
shadow, on a thick, pale carnation ground; hair in brown wash, lined with darker colour and with gouache heightening; collar in white on pale grey wash, costume in black with lights in grey; background, a landscape washed and hatched in gouache; on vellum put down on a leaf from a table- book.
Condition: Apparently pristine, but relaid on a perspex support at the Museum c.1965.
Signed: Lower right, in black: IH 1647 (see G in Appendix 2).
Frame: Seventeenth-century enamelled gold locket with a convex back covered with opaque pale blue enamel within a gold border; the inside partly counter-enamelled; the sides rounded and enamelled in the same pale blue, with the gold drawn up into a bezel which holds the convex glass; the hanger of inverted D-section, enamelled (much missing), and with a simulated knotted cord in pale blue and black enamel wound round its shank, making two symmetrical bows, the tapering ends passing through the bows and over the case in three undulations. A severe damage to the enamel at the base on the back and numerous losses. The front cover missing and points of attachment damaged or filed off.
Provenance: Miss Armorel Carey in 1946; sold by private treaty to the Museum, February 1962.
Exhibited: V&A, New Acquisitions, April 1962; New Haven etc. 1981-2, no. 40.
Literature: Country Life, vol. C, no. 2599 (8 November 1946), p. 857, repro.; Apollo vol. LXXVI, no. 3 (May 1962), p. 232, repro. ('probably' J Wildman); Accessions 1962, p.68; Murdoch 1978, pp. 284-8, fig. 30; Summary Catalogue, 1981, p. 32; Murdoch 1981, p. 102, pl. 22a (repro. in colour) Reynolds 1982, p. 508; Reynolds 1988, pp.44, 46, pl.IX.
The miniature was brought into the Museum for opinion in 1946 following the publication of an enquiry in Country Life. Graham Reynolds identified the artist and pointed out that the sitter 'closely resembled' the subject of an etching of 1653 by Hollar, which was identified as Wildman, the famous regicide. When the miniature was purchased by the Museum in 1962, CM Kauffmann reviewed the evidence relating to the Hollar image. He noted that it was reproduced in Maurice Ashley's biography of Wildman, but that the first mention of it as a portrait of Wildman was as late as the 1774 Supplement to Granger 1769. The first edition contains no mention of Wildman. Granger's comment on the Hollar etching was: 'I never saw this print at least with a name. It is mentioned in a manuscript catalogue of English heads, by Vertue, which is in my possession' (1) Neither the 1745 nor the 1759 edition of Vertue's A Description of the Work of Wenceslas Hollar (2) identifies the print as Wildman.
Subsequent editions of Granger (3) include an engraving by W Richardson after Hollar, identified as Wildman. It was this English tradition that Gustav Parthey referred to when, including the Hollar print among the 'Unnamed male heads', he commented: 'Gilt fiir des Bildnis des Major Wildman'. (4)
No other portraits are known. Sir Charles Firth's entry on Wildman in the DNB refers to an engraving by Faithorne with the admonitory tag 'Nil admirari', but no impression of this is now retrievable. A miniature, said to be of Wildman by Cooper, 'highly finished in a silver-gilt case' was for sale at 4 gns in 1827.(5) The latter is not now known but the date of its sale suggests that the image could have been checked against the versions of Hollar in Granger.
Clearly therefore the identification of this miniature as Wildman is open to doubt. The tradition on which it is founded is long, but is based on a lost manuscript by Vertue, who on such matters is not always reliable. Further, the date on this miniature is surprisingly early in Wildman's career: according to the DNB he had ceased to belong to Fairfax's Life Guards by October 1647 and had taken on the leadership of the army opposition to negotiations with the King. His fortune appears not to have been made until his successful speculations of 1649 in the forfeit lands of royalists. On the face of it this miniature, in its very expensive locket, looks like the portrait of a well-established man, not of a radical soldier-politician riding the wave of the Revolution.
The landscape background, in which Hoskins again demonstrates a debt to Hollar and which seems to include a view of the Tower, could only have been prophetically apt for Wildman: his imprisonment of 1648 was in Newgate, that of 1655 at Chepstow, and it was not until 1661 that he was lodged in the Tower of London. Castle backgrounds are in fact frequent in miniatures by Hoskins and usually seem to have no iconographic significance.
Stylistically, this miniature is related to a substantial group of miniatures all similarly signed IH and dated from the mid-l 640s (e.g., Unknown Woman called Princess Elizabeth, dated 1645) (6) to the late 1650s (e.g., Unknown Man aged 67 of 1658), (7) and perhaps including Cat. Nos 30 and 32. The group centres on the 'Ipse' portrait of 1656 in the Buccleuch Collection, which arguably establishes the artist of the whole group as John Hoskins the Younger. (8)
1 Granger 1769, Supplement 1774, p. 296.
2 Ibid., pp. 72 and 84, respectively.
3 E.g.,the 4th,1804,voI.III,facing p.77, and the 5th 1824, vol. II, Part III, p. 207.
4 G Parthey, WenzelHollar (1853), p.385, no.1697.
5 A Catalogue of Painted British Portraits...now selling at the Prices Fixed. Horatio Rodd, 17 Air Street, Piccadilly.
6 Beauchamp Collection.
7 Formerly Pfungst Collection, photo V&A.
8 See Murdoch 1978."
Exhibition History
The English Miniature (Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven 01/01/1981-31/12/1982)
New Acquisitions (Victoria and Albert Museum 01/04/1962-30/04/1962)
Labels and date
British Galleries:
This miniature may show Sir John Wildman (possibly 1621-1693). In 1647 he campaigned as a spokesman for the Parliamentary soldiers and the Levellers, a radical republican group. From 1650 to 1655 he made a comfortable fortune through the sale of Royalist properties. [27/03/2003]
Materials
Water-colour; Vellum
Techniques
Painting
Subjects depicted
Man; London; Tower of London; Wildman, John (Sir)
Categories
Portraits; Paintings
Collection code
PDP
