Portrait miniature of John Holles, 2nd Earl of Clare, watercolour on vellum, painted by D. M., a copy after Samuel Cooper, 1656 or later.

Portrait of a man, head and shoulders, turned to right, looking to front and wearing a black cap and armour. Features in brown and gummy dark sanguine, with black grey for the shadows, heightened with gummy white, on a warm carnation ground; hair in brown wash, lined in darker colour and with the lights in grey; cap in black wash; collar in white, modelled with dark grey and brown; armour in brown wash, modelled in black and grey; and with lights in pale grey and white and the studs in gold; background to the left a brown wash, hatched with darker colour, and to the right a sky freely washed with pale blue and yellow; a gold marginal stip; on vellum put down on a leaf from a table-book.

Frame: A gilt rim, with straight sides, the back closed by velvet-covered card; plain loop hanger. This frame was supplied for the miniature after it entered the Museum; the miniature was recorded by Jonathan Mayne on receipt as being in a 'gilded, carved wooden frame', which has now disappeared.

Portrait of a man, head and shoulders, turned to right, looking to front and wearing a black cap and armour.

Given by H. E. Backer

Provenance: H E Backer (the dealer), from whom purchased, September 1952.

This miniature is signed in black at the lower right, ‘D. M.’. We do not know who this artist was, but he or she signed three other miniatures in the V&A.

This one is a portrait after Samuel Cooper's miniature of John Holles, 2nd Earl of Clare, which is in a private collection at Welbeck Abbey in England. The Cooper miniature is signed and dated 1656. It is closely related to two large oil paintings, also at Welbeck Abbey. One is a three-quarter-length portrait in armour, and the other a derivative of it, a three-quarter length in peer's robes, by Maria Verelst.

P.30-1952