Physical description
Portrait, head and shoulders, slightly to right and looking to front; wearing a lace cap, ruff collar, richly embroidered bodice and a blue gown. Features hatched and stippled firmly in brown and sanguine, with some white blended in and touches of local colour in eyes and lips; hair in brown wash worked over with darker colour and with the lights in pale gouache, especially to the left; all over a pale carnation ground; the dress in opaque grey wash, the flowers in green, yellow and pink, and the coat in opaque blue washes with the lights in paler colour; cap and ruff in pale grey wash, worked over in white and with the lace in embossed white; gold-work in the dress, the ear-ring and the gold marginal strip in metallic gold over ochre; background a red curtain, floated wet-in-wet, hatched with darker colour and with the lights in gouache, not taken out; on vellum put down on pasteboard (playing card, one spade visible).
Frame: A presumably old, and perhaps original, double-sided oval locket, the lid for this miniature is now missing; of plain gold strip enclosing fields of black composition (perhaps jet); the hanger a round loop of square section set obliquely on quatrefoil scroll (repeated at the bottom), which includes on the back a pin fixing, and on the front the peg for closing the lid; at the base, a loop for the missing pearl.
Place of Origin
England, Great Britain (painted)
Date
1616-1617 (painted)
Artist/maker
Oliver, Peter, born 1589 - died 1647 (artist)
Norgate, Edward (previously attributed to, artist)
Materials and Techniques
Watercolour on vellum put down on pasteboard
Marks and inscriptions
'Juditha Norgate. / .1617. aet: 25 / Non obijt sed abijt. / Pudictae Pietatis, / et Venustatis rarissimum / decus. / Suauissimae Conuigi / Ed: Norgate' 'Judith Norgate. 1617. aged 25 She has not died buy gone away. Most special ornament of modesty, piety and beauty. To the most sweet wife [signed] Edward Norgate'
Dimensions
Height: 54 mm, Width: 43 mm
Object history note
Provenance: Miss Agnes Probyn of Gloucestershire, by whom given to Mrs Julia O Jones (widow of a General Jones of Gloucestershire; the family originally lived at Naes House, near Lydney), from whom purchased privately by the Museum with funds from the Capt. H B Murray Bequest, 1935.
Descriptive line
Portrait miniature of Mrs Edward Norgate, watercolour on vellum, painted by Peter Oliver, 1616-1617.
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 6., pp.20-21. Full Citation:
"Mrs Edward Norgate, born Judith Lanier
(b.1590 d.1617/8)
1616-17
P.71-1950
Oval 54 x 43 mm
Features hatched and stippled firmly in brown and sanguine, with some white blended in and touches of local colour in eyes and lips; hair in brown wash worked over with darker colour and with the lights in pale gouache, especially to the left; all over a pale carnation ground; the dress in opaque grey wash, the flowers in green, yellow and pink, and the coat in opaque blue washes with the lights in paler colour; cap and ruff in pale grey wash, worked over in white and with the lace in embossed white; gold-work in the dress, the ear-ring and the gold marginal strip in metallic gold over ochre; background a red curtain, floated wet-in-wet, hatched with darker colour and with the lights in gouache, not taken out; on vellum put down on pasteboard (playing card, one spade visible).
Condition: Some fading, especially in the face; otherwise good.
Signed: Not signed. Inscribed on the back in ink in a fine scribal hand: Juditha Norgate. / .1617. aet: 25 / Non obijt sed abijt. / Pudictae Pietatis, / et Venustatis rarissimum / decus. / Suauissimae Conuigi / Ed: Norgate 'Judith Norgate. 1617. aged 25 She has not died buy gone away. Most special ornament of modesty, piety and beauty. To the most sweet wife [signed] Edward Norgate'.
Frame: A presumably old, and perhaps original, double-sided oval locket, the lid for this miniature is now missing; of plain gold strip enclosing fields of black composition (perhaps jet); the hanger a round loop of square section set obliquely on quatrefoil scroll (repeated at the bottom), which includes on the back a pin fixing, and on the front the peg for closing the lid; at the base, a loop for the missing pearl.
Provenance: Miss Agnes Probyn of Gloucestershire, by whom given to Mrs Julia O Jones (widow of a General Jones of Gloucestershire; the family originally lived at Naes House, near Lydney), from whom purchased privately by the Museum with funds from the Capt. H B Murray Bequest, 1935.
Exhibited: Tate Gallery 1972-3, pp. 110, 118, no.208 (as by Norgate).
Literature: V&A, Review of the Principal Acquisitions, 1935, p.29; Carl Winter, Elizabethan Miniatures (1943), pp.7, 29, 31, pl. xvi(a); Reynolds 1952, p.38; Auerbach 1961, p.282 (as by Norgate but stressing stylistic similarity to Isaac Oliver especially 'in the modelling of the mouth and eyes'); Foskett 1963, p.63, fig. 29; Schidloff 1964, vol.II, p.595, pl.431; Foskett 1972, vol.I, p.424; Edmond 1978-80, pp.78-80, suggesting the attribution to Peter Oliver; Foskett 1979, p.78; Summary Catalogue, 1981, p.40 (as by Norgate); Murdoch 1981, pl. 17 c (as by Oliver); Edmond 1983, pp.182-3, fig. 43 (the support card mistakenly said to be part of an ace of hearts, otherwise confirming her earlier attribution to Oliver and correcting the age of the sitter).
On it s discovery in 1935, the miniature was attributed to Edward Norgate, the distinguished Windsor Herald, illuminator and author of the important treatise Miniatura, or, the Art of Limning (c.1646). (1) A close copy, attributed on the basis of the present miniature to Norgate, was in the collection of Miss M Lawson-Tancred (2) and is reproduced in colour in Foskett 1972, vol.I, pl. V, together with two other examples of portrait miniatures and an example of an illuminated coat of arms. The hand in the latter limnings is not necessarily the same as in this Judith Lanier, and though clearly competent, it is not that of as deft and deeply accustomed a practitioner as Peter Oliver. Sharing a flat blue background with the coats of arms, they suggest, however, that Norgate may have painted miniatures at least for recreation or amusement as his words in the opening paragraphs of Miniatura indicate. (3)
It was Mary Edmond, working on the ramifications of the Harding and Lanier families during the 1970s, who realised that the inscription on the back of this miniature did not mean that the portrait was by Norgate. She advanced the suggestion that it was by Peter Oliver, a friend and possibly cousin of the Laniers (4) and close associate of Norgate, and the obvious artist for the family to commission. Her suggestion is certainly right, for the technique - especially in the flesh-painting and the red-curtain background - is unmistakably the of the Oliver and the only possible question comes from the fact that at this date, which is c.1616, distinction between the hands of Isaac and Petter Oliver is difficult if not impossible. Comparison with the earlier (perhaps c.1610) portrait of Elizabeth Harding, Mrs Isaac Oliver, at Welbeck Abbey, shows how similar to Isaac's work, in respect of both iconography and execution, this portrait is. Goulding (5) incidentally recalls that the identification of Mrs Oliver depends on an inscription in the hand of Bernard Lens, and that it was challenged by Walpole in the Anecdotes who considered Mrs Oliver to be the finest work of Peter Oliver, and to represent Peter's wife Anne. Peter Oliver's wife was the sister of his father's wife, so they probably resembled one another; they may even have looked quite like Judith Lanier, for the relationships between the Hardings and Laniers were also close. (6)
Judith Lanier, baptised at Holy Trinity, Minories, in December 1590, was the sister of Nicholas Lanier, a flautist at Court, who produced a distinguished musical family including his namesake, his grandson Nicholas, subsequently Master of the King's Music to Charles I. The date of her marriage to Norgate is not known. She died and was buried at St.Martin-in-the-Fields on 16 February 1617/18. It is interesting that her husband thought she was two years younger than in fact she was.
1 See Norgate, Miniatura.
2 Sold Sotheby's 5 July 1984, now Huntington Library and Art Gallery, California.
3 See Edmond 1983, p.183.
4 Ibid., p.184.
5 Goulding 1914-15, p.67, no.22, pl.VI.
6 Edmond 1983."
Exhibition History
The age of Charles I (Tate Gallery, London 01/01/1972-31/12/1973)
Production Note
As argued by Mary Edmond in her book "Hilliard and Oliver" (Hale, 1983), pp.182-3, the inscription identifying the portrait as of Judith Norgate (born Lanier) is by Edward Norgate, but does not indicate authorship of the miniature itself. Style suggests it is by Peter Oliver, who was a friend and possibly cousin of Norgate.
Materials
Watercolour; Vellum
Techniques
Painting
Subjects depicted
Woman; Ruff; Norgate, Judith
Categories
Portraits; Paintings
Collection code
PDP
