Two miniature portraits, set in one frame, of John Croker and his wife Frances (nee Kingsmill). The portrait of Frances Croker seems to relate to a portrait of her attributed to George Gower, oil on panel, W.1-1931. These miniatures were re-attributed around 1975 as 'style of Nicholas Hilliard, 19th century'. They have now been re-catalogued as 16th century, by Nicholas Hilliard, watercolour on vellum, 16th century, English School

Salting Bequest

In the exhibition Fake? The Art of Deception, held at the British Museum in 1990, these two portrait miniatures of John and Frances Croker, born Kingsmill, previously attributed to Nicholas Hilliard, were displayed as examples of nineteenth century fakes or pastiches. The catalogue entry written by Jim Murrell (1), then conservator of miniatures at the V&A, detailed the technical grounds for this attribution (2). Until the mid-1970s these miniatures had been accepted as by Hilliard, perhaps the foremost Elizabethan miniature painter. Authorities in the field, such as Graham Reynolds and Erna Auerbach had previously regarded them as characteristic examples of Hilliard's work (3). But from 1975 the two works were reattributed as 19th century, perhaps painted around the 1840s by the miniature painter George Perfect Harding (1779/80-1853)(4). The attribution of this miniature has been reconsidered and the miniatures havae now been re-attributed to Nicholas Hilliard. (See, Katherine Coombs, Alan Derbyshire, Nicholas Frayling and Timea Tallian, A multi-faceted approach to the study of Tudor portrait miniatures : A case study of the "Croker" miniatures. In Art, Conservation and Authenticities: Material, Concept, Context. Collected Papers. Glasgow University (2009).

Endnotes
1) Vernon James (known as Jim) Murrell (1934 - 1994) worked in the Conservation Department of the V&A from 1961 until 1994.
2) Ed. Mark Jones, Fake? The Art of Deception, (The British Museum, London, 1990), pp. 276-8
3) Graham Reynolds, Nicholas Hilliard and Isaac Oliver (Victoria and Albert Museum Handbooks, London, 1947), cat.24, p.28. Republished, (HMSO, London 1971), cat.24, p.24.; Erna Auerbach, Nicholas Hilliard (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London 1961), cat. 50, p.295 and plate 54, p.87.
4) Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online, Oxford University Press 2004-7.

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