Portrait miniature of Elizabeth of Bohemia, daughter of James I, watercolour on vellum, painted by Peter Oliver, ca. 1623-1626.

Portrait, head and shoulders, slightly to left and looking to front; within an oval border in a rectangular frame. Features modelled in long hatches of brown and sanguine with some grey, with dark grey and white highlights in the eyes, and red for the lips, all on a pale warm carnation ground; hair in densely worked brown hatches over a pale brown wash; some long, soft grey-brown strokes at the hair line; the ruff in impasted white over pale brown wash; pear ear-rings in metallic gold, burnished silver and white; fichu in fine lines of white with some grey modelling over the carnation; pearls at the breast in burnished silver and white; dress in grey and brown over black wash; decoration in metallic gold with silver for the diamonds; rosettes at the shoulder and breast in crimson, gold and silver; background in solid blue, shaded with dark grey above the shoulders; on vellum put down on pasteboard, evidently a playing card (one hear?); the whole mounted in a rectangular vellum, and ruled and lettered in gold, with a blue margin.

Frame: A gilt rim of V-section knurled and channelled between bevels, the glass held in rebate and with a toothed copper strip to close the back; designed for fitting to a fabric-covered cushion frame.

Bequeathed by Mrs Doris Hershorn

From 'Artists of the Tudor Court', V&A exhibition, 1983, entry for P.23-1975: This miniature once belonged to a group of ten, four of which are now in the V&A [P.23-1975, P.24-1975, P.27-1975 and P.28-1975 - all framed in the same way with the miniature laid onto a later piece of parchment and inscribed with details of the sitter]. The earliest account of their history (Lord Ronald Sutherland Gower, The Great Historic Galleries of England, London, 1881, pl. xx) is highly romanticized and claims provenance from James II via Louis XIV which cannot be proved. Their certain history is as follows: acquired in Paris by James Edwards (1757-1816), bookseller and bibliographer, probably in the aftermath of the Treaty of Amiens; sold Christie’s July 15th 1816 (lot 61); acquired by the Rev. Thomas Butt of Kinnersley, Shropshire, who married Edward’s widow; by descent to Capt. H. Edwards-Heathcote, Belton Hall, Market Drayton; sold Christie’s June 13th 1928 (lot 45); purchased by Mrs Doris Herschorn; bequeathed, 1975.Mrs Herschorn), and by her bequeathed to the V&A 1975.

This miniature is set in a vellum mount inscribed with the name of the sitter. The vellum mount is a later addition. It was thought that this secondary mount dated from the late 17th century, but it was probably added in the early 19th century. See John Murdoch, Seventeenth-century English Miniatures in the Collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum (1997), catalogue number 12.

P.27-1975