Thomas Flatman, Portrait of a Man in Armor, 1661

Chicago:

Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, “Thomas Flatman, Portrait of a Man in Armor, 1661,” catalogue entry in Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, Blythe Sobol, and Maggie Keenan, The Starr Collection of Portrait Miniatures, 1500–1850: The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, vol. 2, ed. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024), https://doi.org/10.37764/8322.5.1218.

MLA:

Marcereau DeGalan, Aimee. “Thomas Flatman, Portrait of a Man in Armor, 1661,” catalogue entry. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, Blythe Sobol, and Maggie Keenan. The Starr Collection of Portrait Miniatures, 1500–1850: The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, edited by Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, vol. 2, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024. doi: 10.37764/8322.5.1218.

See the artist’s biography in volume 4.

Painted in the decade following the English Civil War (1642–1651), with its bloody disputes between the crown and parliament, this early Thomas Flatman portrait of an unknown military officer represents a Royalist whose red sash, worn across his body, signals allegiance to the crown.¹ The sitter wears a gilt-studded metal breastplate, reflecting a shift in focus from armor production to firearms as gunpowder became more effective during the latter part of the sixteenth century. The need to improve chest armor against bullets resulted in heavier armor, leading knights to prioritize breastplates and cuirasses over less essential pieces. By the late 1500s, only the most traditional warriors still wore full sets of armor in battle.² Adding a touch of elegance and style to his uniform, this sitter also wears a white lace jabot tied around his neck.

Flatman chose a statuesque presentation for his sitter, setting him prominently before a pillar at left and an open landscape on the right—a pictorial device that he and others, including his English near-contemporary, Samuel Cooper (ca. 1608–1672), employed. A distant three-tower castle appears in the background, with red flags blazing against a pale section of sky. Flatman’s subdued range of color—from the cool gradations of blue found in the armor, sea, and sky to the warmer tones of the sitter’s face and hair—also derives from Cooper.³ Flatman’s technique, like Cooper’s, involved using red-brown hatching to build up the structure of the sitter’s face. However, Flatman’s strokes are more linear, and they crisscross to indicate volume and shape along the sitter’s cheek and jawline. Unlike Cooper’s smooth surfaces, Flatman’s brushstrokes are “dry and scratchy,” evident especially in passages of the sitter’s curls and the landscape.⁴

There are diverging points of view on the reasons for Flatman’s distinctive brushwork. One school of thought proposes that his use of small brushes may have caused this effect.⁵ An alternative suggestion is that Flatman intentionally adopted this technique to draw attention to his materials and skills, challenging the conventional view that portraiture was about the sitter’s vanity rather than the artist’s abilities.⁶ Flatman’s talent for detail is apparent in the sitter’s aging face, with its downward creases at the corners of the mouth and his sunken eyes with visible crow’s feet at their corners.

In both his paintings and his poetry, Flatman developed a style that struck a balance between honoring his subjects and avoiding excessive adulation. Through this approach, he avoids excessive prettiness, which lends his portraits a frank and open quality, allowing his sitters to gaze confidently out of their frames at the viewer.⁷

Notes

1. “Civil War: Soldiers,” The Cromwell Museum, accessed April 1, 2023, https://www.cromwellmuseum.org/cromwell/civil-war/soldiers. During the English Civil War, there was a lack of standardization in the equipment issued to soldiers. Consequently, they often mistakenly killed their comrades in incidents of friendly fire. To address this issue, officers began wearing colored sashes, with tawny orange or pale blue for Parliamentarians and crimson red for Royalists. A scarf usually indicated an officer, with even sergeants qualifying as regimental officers. However, the quality of the scarf varied depending on the individual’s wealth.

2. For more information on armor and marks of London Armourers, see Thom Richardson et al., The London Armourers in the 17th Century (Leeds: Royal Armouries, 2004).

3. On at least two occasions, English antiquarian George Vertue mistook Flatman’s work for Cooper’s, including a work owned by Lord Oxford of “a young knight of the Bath in a rich habit, dated 1661, and with the painter’s initial letter F., which was so masterly that Vertue pronounces Flatman equal to Hoskins and next to Cooper.” See Horace Walpole et al., Anecdotes of Painting in England: With Some Account of the Principal Artists and Incidental Notes on Other Arts, 3rd rev. ed. (London: J. Dodsley, 1782), 60.

4. Katherine Coombs, The Portrait Miniature in England (London: V&A Publications, 2005), 71.

5. Jim Murrell, “The Craft of the Miniaturist,” in John Murdoch, Jim Murrell, Patrick Noon, and Roy Strong, The English Miniature (London: Yale University Press, 1981), 15, cited in Coombs, Portrait Miniature in England, 71.

6. John Murdoch, “The Seventeenth-Century Enlightenment,” in Murdoch et al., English Miniature, 151–53.

7. Graham Reynolds, “A Miniature Self-Portrait by Thomas Flatman, Limner and Poet,” Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 89, no. 528 (1947): 63–67.

Mrs. Marjorie Rees, by November 11, 1954 [1];

Purchased from her sale, Catalogue of Fine Portrait Miniatures, Faberge, Watches and Objects of Vertu, Sotheby’s, London, November 11, 1954, lot 20, as A Miniature of a Man in Armour, by Leggatt Brothers, London, probably on behalf of Mr. John W. (1905–2000) and Mrs. Martha Jane (1906–2011) Starr, Kansas City, MO, 1954–1958 [2];

Their gift to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1958.

Notes

[1] Additional information on Rees remains unknown, but her life dates may be ca. 1899–1955.

[2] “A Miniature of a Man in Armour by Thomas Flatman, signed and dated 1661, head and shoulders three-quarters sinister, gaze directed at spectator, full wig falling to the shoulders, wearing knotted cravat and pink sash over a suit of armour, on the sinister side a landscape with view of a castle, 2 1/8 in.” See illustration facing page 10. The annotated catalogue for this sale is located at University of Missouri-Kansas City’s Miller Nichols Library. The annotations are most likely by Mr. or Mrs. Starr. It is annotated with “Bid 400” and “105,” and the lot number is circled. According to an attached price list, “Leggatt Bros.” bought lot 20 for £105. Archival research has shown that Leggatt Brothers served as purchasing agents for the Starrs. See correspondence between Betty Hogg and Martha Jane Starr, May 15 and June 3, 1950, Nelson-Atkins curatorial files.

Catalogue of Fine Portrait Miniatures, Faberge, Watches and Objects of Vertu (London: Sotheby’s, November 11, 1954), 5, as A Miniature of a Man in Armour.

Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 13, p. 12, (repro.), as Unknown Man.