Physical description
Portrait, head and shoulders, turned slightly to right and looking to front; wearing a blue sash and high collar; drapery in the background. Features in firm broad hatches of brown and sanguine with some blue shadow over a pale creamy carnation ground; the hair in pale brown wash, worked over with long strokes in darker colour and the lights in gouache; collar in opaque white over a pale brown wash and the doublet in black with gold heightening; the ribbon washed in blue with white heightening; background landscape washed and hatched in gouache; the curtain a flooded transparent crimson, washed wet-in-wet; a gold marginal strip; on vellum put down on pasteboard.
Frame: Nineteenth-century (c. 1862) copper-gilt locket, convex back and straight sides with a central torus moulding, the sides drawn up into a bezel which holds the convex glass; the hanger of cosse de pois type with a projection at each shoulder and a small bead on top, between two separate spirals of flat wire, diminishing in four turns. Cf Cat. No. 29.
Place of Origin
England, Great Britain (painted)
Date
ca. 1635 (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: 100 mm, Width: 81 mm
Object history note
Provenance: By 1862 in the possession of Thomas Whitehead the dealer, who recorded 'at the back of the old ebony frame of this fine minature [ sic] by I Hoskins - was as follows This is the Picture of the Earl of Dorset who presented it to Richard Young "his Lordships Attorney" of the Temple London Gent. in token of the regard he retained for him on account of his meritorious Service and integrity - The above Richard Young was the Grandfather of Mrs Mary Hall of Sandgate Copied by Thos M Whitehead of Duke St St Iames's London Feby 4 1862-'; presumably sold by Whitehead to Charles F Huth; his sale, Christie's 10 July 1895, lot 5, bt Provenance: Hodgkin, £160, and by him sold to George Salting, £210; bequeathed by Salting to the Museum, 1910.
Descriptive line
Portrait miniature of Edward Sackville, 4th Earl of Dorset, watercolour on vellum, by John Hoskins, ca.1635.
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.35, p.69-70. Full Citation:
"35 Edward SackviIle, 4th Earl of Dorset
(b.1591 d.1652)
c.1635
P104-1910
Oval 100 x 81 mm
Features in firm broad hatches of brown and sanguine with some blue shadow over a pale creamy carnation ground; the hair in pale brown wash, worked over with long strokes in darker colour and the lights in gouache; collar in opaque white over a pale brown wash and the doublet in black with gold heightening; the ribbon washed in blue with white heightening; background landscape washed and hatched in gouache; the curtain a flooded transparent crimson, washed wet-in-wet; a gold marginal strip; on vellum put down on pasteboard.
Condition: Good; minor loss on the sitter's left cheek; the background, especially in the gummed passages a little flaked.
Signed: Centre right, in gold: IH (see H in Appendix 2).
Frame: Nineteenth-century (c. 1862) copper-gilt locket, convex back and straight sides with a central torus moulding, the sides drawn up into a bezel which holds the convex glass; the hanger of cosse de pois type with a projection at each shoulder and a small bead on top, between two separate spirals of flat wire, diminishing in four turns. Cf Cat. No. 29 [P.105-1910].
Provenance: By 1 862 in the possession of Thomas Whitehead the dealer, who recorded 'at the back of the old ebony frame of this fine minature [ sic] by I Hoskins - was as follows This is the Picture of the Earl of Dorset who presented it to Richard Young "his Lordships Attorney" of the Temple London Gent. in token of the regard he retained for him on account of his meritorious Service and integrity - The above Richard Young was the Grandfather of Mrs Mary Hall of Sandgate Copied by Thos M Whitehead of Duke St St Iames's London Feby 4 1862-'; presumably sold by Whitehead to Charles F Huth; his sale, Christie's 10 July 1895, lot 5, bt Hodgkin, £160, and by him sold to George Salting, £210; bequeathed by Salting to the Museum, 1910.
Literature: Salting Collection, 1911, p. 46; Foster 1914-16, vol. II, p. 127, no. 5 6 (as 3rd Earl of Dorset by Hoskins, though 'Very like Cooper but inferior'); Long 1929, p. 224; Long 1930, p. 37 (as after Van Dyck); Reynolds 1952, p. 47; Colding 1953, p. 119; Oliver Millar, 'Painting in the Age of Charles II', Connoisseur, CXLVII (February 1961), p. 3; Murdoch 1978, p. 287, fig. 23; Summary Catalogue, 1981, p. 31; Murdoch 1981, p. 99, fig. 108; Reynolds 1988, pp. 40-1,48, fig. 20; A Moore and C Crawley, Family and Friends: A Regional Survey of British Portraiture (1992), p. 85 .
The miniature is not recorded either in Davies (1) or in the NPG archive. The identification, however, both certain and longstanding, being due to Long who recognised the connection with the portrait of Edward Sackville at Knole House, in Kent, which was hung almost invisibly and was universally accepted as an autograph Van Dyck. That sitter was the 4th rather than the 3rd Earl was indicated by the key, symbol of office the Lord Chamberlain to the Queen, hanging at the waist, and by the blue ribbon of le Garter. The miniature was therefore regarded as a simple copy of the Van Dyck, an example of the effect on Hoskins' native style of Van Dyck's new Court portraiture. (2)
In 1961, however, the Knole picture was shown at the Age of Charles II exhibition and catalogued as a studio work.(3) Oliver Millar, reviewing the exhibition, confessed that, though a fine composition, the picture was a disappointment, and he suggested that the head probably derived from a source outside the Van Dyck studio, possibly from the Hoskins miniature. The case for Oliver Millar's view may be summarised as follows: the head in the Knole picture carries no conviction as from the life; by comparison with similar pictures such as the Mountjoy Blount, Earl of Newport (4) the face is a mere mask, an altogether less plastic and mobile creation, and ill-matched with the pose; in contrast, the miniature does seem to have been taken from the life, and the head and shoulders are coherently related to one another and to the red-curtain background which, floated wet-in-wet, had been the normal prop of the London miniaturists since Hilliard; the baroque elaboration of the background and the alterations in costume should therefore, on this view, imply development from the miniature to the full-scale rather than the other way round.
On the other hand, although not unprecedented in the special circumstances surrounding the production of the posthumous Prince Henry after Isaac Oliver (Windsor), the use by Van Dyck or his studio of miniatures as source material must have been very exceptional. Normally, after Hilliard, miniaturists followed full-scale likenesses, and Hoskins and his studio followed Van Dyck very frequently (see for example Cat. Nos 36-8). David Loggan's testimony is also salutary: 'you knowe Sr that it is exciding hardt to make a graet pictor after a littel one, and the altering of the dres makes a graet alteration.' (5)
The miniature, on the evidence of the costume and of Sackville's apparent age, should date from c.1635, and the Knole picture, if Oliver Millar were right, from about the same time. Van Dyck arrived in England in 1632, so the primacy of the miniature would not, of course, imply its stylistic independence of Van Dyck; indeed, as Reynolds pointed out, it would be eloquent testimony of the way in which London artists had already learnt to imitate the master. For Hoskins, however, the style marks a departure from that established in the studio since the early 1620s, and this change in manner (signalled by the appearance of a new form of signature) is too radical in my view to be explained merely by the influence of Van Dyck's arrival in London. Technically, in the forceful use of brown and sanguine hatching with blue shadow in the face, the painting looks forwards to Samuel Cooper's signed work in the next decade. It shows the emergence of the English baroque miniature from the Hoskins studio and contrasts significantly with the continued production there of works such as Cat. Nos 24, 27, 28 and 29.6
Although the Hoskins signature, which is completely authentic, compels the classification of this miniature under Hoskins, it may well be an early work by Samuel Cooper, directly comparable to the 1st Earl of Holland (Cat. No. 61), which is here classified as Cooper because, although probably also produced in Hoskins' studio, it does not bear that master's signature.
1 Davies 1979.
2 Reynolds 1952.
3 E Larsen comments: 'The painting was done with studio help.' (Larsen 1988, vol Il, p.38, no. 984).
4 Glück 1931, pl.400.
5 MS letter to Sir Thomas Isham, 16/17 January 1675/6; printed in Gyles Isham, 'The Correspondence of David Loggan with Sir Thomas Isham', Connoisseur, CLIV (October 1963), p. 87, pl. II.
6 See above and Murdoch 1978."
Materials
Watercolour; Vellum
Techniques
Painting
Subjects depicted
Man; Sash; Earl; Dorset, Edward Sackville (4th Earl of)
Categories
Portraits; Paintings
Collection code
PDP
