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Frances Howard, Duchess of Richmond and Lennox

Portrait Miniature
1605-1610 (painted)
Artist/Maker
Nicholas Hilliard (artist)
Place of origin
England (painted)

Portrait miniature of Frances Howard, head and shoulders, wearing a crown, in an oval frame with a loop at top. The reverse of the backing card is painted with a design of oval bands and scallops in ochre, brown and gold.

Object details

Categories
Paintings
Portraits
Object type
Portrait miniature
TitleFrances Howard, Duchess of Richmond and Lennox (generic title)
Materials and techniques
Watercolour on vellum, stuck onto a card
Cardboard
Vellum
Watercolour
Painting
Brief description
Portrait miniature of Frances Howard, Duchess of Richmond and Lennox, watercolour on vellum, by Nicholas Hilliard, 1605-1610.
Physical description
Portrait miniature of Frances Howard, head and shoulders, wearing a crown, in an oval frame with a loop at top. The reverse of the backing card is painted with a design of oval bands and scallops in ochre, brown and gold.
Dimensions
  • Height: 32mm
  • Width: 26mm
  • Case height: 42mm
  • Case width: 29mm
  • Case depth: 5mm
Dimensions taken from: Strong, Roy. Artists of the Tudor Court: the Portrait Miniature Rediscovered 1520-1620.. London: The Victoria and Albert Museum, 1983.
Content description
Portrait of a woman, head and shoulders, to front; the sitter is wearing a crown, lace collar, a necklace and a dress adorned with jewels.
Styles
English School
Stuart
Jacobean
Marks and inscriptions
'Duch]ess of Richmo[nd]…by Hilliard / … / Elizabeth… / …. / married to [Frederick] K. of Bohem[ia] 1602' (On the back of the frame there is a piece of card with a 17th century inscription crossed through and only barely legible in parts)
Credit line
Given by Mrs Emma Joseph
Object history
COLLECTIONS: Given by Mrs Emma Joseph, widow of Samuel S. Joseph. 1941; no previous history.
Subjects depicted
Woman
Crown
Jewellery
Frances Howard
Bibliographic references
  • Strong, Roy. Artists of the Tudor Court: the Portrait Miniature Rediscovered 1520-1620.. London: The Victoria and Albert Museum, 1983. Cat. 114, pp. 89-90. Part Citation: "Frances Howard (1578-1639) was the daughter of Thomas, 1st Viscount Howard of Bindon. Through her first marriage to a City merchant, Henry Pranell, she became a great heiress. In December 1600 she married as her second husband Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford (1539?-1621), eldest son of Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset, Edward VI’s Lord Protector. He died on April 6th 1621 and Frances married almost immediately the King’s cousin, Ludovick Stuart, 2nd Duke of Lennox and Duke of Richmond (1574-1624). Ambitious and beautiful she was called the “double Duchess”. This portrait is a good example of Hilliard’s sustained powers of observation in the new reign when his work, too often judged by repetitions and studio replicas of royal portraits, is held to go into decline. The portrait of the Duchess of Lennox is one of a number of miniatures that decisively reverse the judgement. It is from life and of high quality. Although undated the costume is of about c.1605-10; the jewelled sash is paralleled in portraits of Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia as a girl (see P.4-1937) Until recently the miniature was wrongly identified as Arabella Stuart, a fate likely to befall portraits of Elizabethan and Jacobean ladies wearing their hair loose as in the early portrait of Arabella at Hardwick Hall (Roy Strong, Tudor and Jacobean, II, pl. 602). During a recent technical examination the seventeenth century inscription was discovered. It was only partly decipherable and had been crossed out and replaced with a wrong identification as Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia. The discovery of this is important for the iconography of the Duchess of Lennox as a whole as her name is another one likely to drift onto Jacobean portraits. Previously the most certain likenesses of her were engravings published in here lifetime and inscribed as being here. One by Francis Delaram c. 1610-15 depicts here as Countess of Hertford (Hind, Engraving, II, pp. 229-30). A second, again by Delaram, is dated 1623 and records here as Duchess of Richmond and Lennox (ibid., II, p. 230, pl. 132 (b)). A third issued in the same year is by Willem van de Passe (ibid., II, p. 293, pl. 178(c)). The first two are based on the full length portrait by William Larkin at Helmingham Hall (Roy Strong, The English Icon, p. 320 (no. 235)), even to including the jewellery, albeit slightly rearranged. This must be before the artist’s demise in 1617 and from the costume, can be dated to c. 1615 so must therefore depict her as Lady Hertford. This is important because the Hilliard miniature emerges as the only certain likeness before that date.
  • Victoria and Albert Museum, Department of Engraving, Illustration and Design and Department of Paintings, Accessions 1941, London: HMSO, 1954: Catalogued mistakenly as "Miniature portrait of a lady, said to be Lady Arabella Stuart (1575-1615)".
Collection
Prints, Drawings & Paintings Collection
Accession number
P.15-1941

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Record createdJune 30, 2009
Record URL
https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1067950/frances-howard-duchess-of-richmond-portrait-miniature-nicholas-hilliard/
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