Portrait miniature of Charles Louis, Count Palatine, watercolour on vellum, painted by Alexander Cooper, ca.1632.

Portrait, head and shoulders, turned slightly to right and looking to front. Features firmly hatched in brown and sanguine with a little grey shadow, the brown in the eyes noticeably gummy, on a very pale carnation ground; hair in brown wash, hatched with black and with gouache lights; costume washed and hatched with red; the collar in grey wash and the lace modelled in white; background a flat blue wash; traces of a gold marginal strip; on vellum put down on a leaf from a table-book.

Frame: Eighteenth-century copper-gilt locket, the convex back set into and overlapping strip sides with two thread mouldings, and with bezels turned over the back and the glass; the hanger cast in square section and soldered transversely, the sides cut in calyx form with a small ball finial. The locket, especially its hanger, which is archaising for the eighteenth century, may have been intended to complement the sixteenth-century feel of the solid blue background and gold marginal strip.

Purchased with funds from the Murray Bequest

Provenance: Possibly John Heugh, his sale, Christie's 8 May 1878, lot 94; T Whitcomb Greene, his sale, Sotheby's 7 July 1932, lot 115, bt for the Museum with funds from the Captain H B Murray Bequest.

It is unclear whether this miniature was painted in England or when the artist was on the Continent in the 1630s.

This miniature is now in very poor condition, which makes it hard to imagine its original vivid colouring. It must have been very striking. Nevertheless, it is one of the most expert examples of Alexander Cooper's work. At this late date, the combination of the solid blue background and the bright rose colour of the costume would have seemed unconventional. It is more reminiscent of 16th-century miniatures than the ones that English miniaturists produced from the mid-1630s. These usually epitomised the sophisticated Baroque manner of Sir Anthony Van Dyck. Unconventional colour combinations and the use of unusual background colours distinguish Alexander Cooper's style.

P.25-1932