Citation
Chicago:
Blythe Sobol, “Nicholas Hilliard, Portrait of George Clifford, 3rd Earl of Cumberland, ca. 1587,” 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/10.37764/8322.5.1102.
MLA:
Sobol, Blythe. “Nicholas Hilliard, Portrait of George Clifford, 3rd Earl of Cumberland, ca. 1587,” 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: 10.37764/8322.5.1102.
Artist's Biography
See the artist’s biography in volume 4.
Catalogue Entry
This portrait miniature is one of the most important and earliest examples in the Nelson-Atkins collection, not least because it depicts the illustrious Elizabethan courtier George Clifford, 3rd Earl of Cumberland (1558–1605), wearing a spectacular suit of armor now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (Fig. 1).1The Clifford armor, or garniture, was made at the famed Greenwich armory workshop under the direction of Jacob Halder. It is probably the best-preserved and most complete set of Tudor armor known, and its decoration and technical achievements represent the Greenwich school at its height. Its original design is preserved in a detailed drawing in the Almain Album at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Stuart W. Pyhrr, Donald J. La Rocca, and Dirk H. Breiding, The Armored Horse in Europe, 1480–1620 (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2005), 28–29.
Born in 1558, the year of Queen Elizabeth I’s accession, Cumberland would become one of the most illustrious figures of her court.2See Richard T. Spence, The Privateering Earl: George Clifford, 3rd Earl of Cumberland, 1558–1605 (Stroud: Alan Sutton, 1997). This miniature is a small but mighty demonstration of his role as a naval commander and his reputation for knightly chivalry.This is probably the first of three or more portraits by Nicholas Hilliard of Cumberland. It dates to about 1587, the year after the armor was made.3Of this miniature, Roy Strong wrote, “This is the earliest portrait of Cumberland dated by Auerbach c. 1590 but surely earlier in date. His hair is shorter than in the likeness recorded in the family triptych, which is probably based on portraits painted in 1589, and in the full-length miniature. The portrait records his appearance in the Greenwich armour he wore at the Accession Day Tilts which he first attended in 1583.” Roy Strong, Artists of the Tudor Court: The Portrait Miniature Rediscovered, 1520–1620 (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1983), 133. Despite the small scale of the Nelson-Atkins portrait in comparison to Hilliard’s later full-length miniature of Cumberland, it is arguably the most technically accomplished and the strongest likeness of the three (Fig. 2).4The miniatures also differ in format; the Nelson-Atkins portrait, like most of his smaller miniatures, is oval, while the full-length example is rectangular, like the rest of his cabinet miniatures. Nicholas Hilliard, George Clifford, 3rd Earl of Cumberland, ca. 1590, watercolor and bodycolor with gold and silver leaf on vellum, laid on panel, 11 1/4 x 6 15/16 in. (28.5 x 17.6 cm), National Maritime Museum, Royal Museums Greenwich, London, MNT0193, https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/rmgc-object-42140. A third portrait is also a small oval: Nicholas Hilliard (and/or workshop, attrib.), Portrait of George Clifford, 3rd Earl of Cumberland, 1589, watercolor on vellum, Museo Nacional de Arte Decorativo, Buenos Aires, https://museoartedecorativo.cultura.gob.ar/obra/hiliard-nicholas-inglaterra-1547-1619-george-clifford-3er-conde-de-cumberland.
It is highly individualized, with close attention to the sitter’s features. Details such as a faint flush applied with a light wash of color and undereye circles add not only dimension but humanity to the portrait. Hilliard rendered even the tiniest hairs on Clifford’s head with meticulous strokes.The blue-steeled armor is exquisitely and faithfully painted in transparent layers, reflecting Hilliard’s emphasis on painting what he saw. Its realism is also grounded in an understanding of scale and proportion and in the artist’s background as a goldsmith intimately familiar with metalwork. Hilliard slightly altered the armor in the interest of symmetry, changing the Tudor rose on the right pauldron: A piece of metal plate armor that protects the shoulder, upper arm, and underarm area. to a fleur-de-lys: The fleur-de-lys or lily flower is a stylized symbol of a lily utilized as a heraldic symbol for several European dynasties, but it is most closely associated with the royalty and saints of France. It was also used in the heraldry of the English royal House of Plantagenet. The Great Seal of Elizabeth I, designed by the miniaturist Nicholas Hilliard in 1584, featured a fleur-de-lys; it was in use from about 1586 until Elizabeth’s death in 1603. Elizabeth claimed the fleur-de-lys not only through her Plantagenet ancestry but as nominal Queen of France. to match the one on the left.5Stephen Grancsay, “A Miniature Portrait of the Earl of Cumberland in Armor,” Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 15, no. 5 (January 1957): 120–22. Like the miniature, the armor itself is layered with symbolism, faithfully reproduced by Hilliard in shell gold: Shell gold was prepared by miniaturists in advance of painting in a multistep process. First, gold leaf was ground into a fine powder and mixed with honey. Water and a binder, such as gum arabic, were then added to make it paintable. Once applied to the surface with a brush, the shell gold was burnished with a weasel’s tooth to make it shine. Because gold leaf was costly, it was sparingly used, even with miniatures, for jewelry and accents on clothing. Its name was derived from the mussel shells in which it was traditionally stored. to replicate the armor’s mercury-gilded detailing.6Myriad fleur-de-lys and Tudor roses, each joined by love knots, proclaim Cumberland’s loyalty to his monarch and the Tudor dynasty, compounded by the letter E, for Elizabeth, entwined within a heart at the center of the breastplate. The E is displayed back-to-back, or addorsed (a heraldic term). This is repeated throughout the armor, including on both kneecaps. The armor was probably commissioned for Clifford to wear in the Accession Day Tilts, a series of annual festivals celebrating the day that Elizabeth became queen.7Clifford’s association with the Accession Day Tilts was such that in 1590, he was appointed Queen’s Champion of the Tilts in an elaborate ceremony. His duties included organizing and presiding over the festivities. That same year, Clifford was praised in a sonnet by Edmund Spenser in an addition to his epic poem The Faerie Queene, proclaiming him as a “Redoubted Lord! In whose courageous mind; the flower of chivalry now blooming fair”; quoted in Arthur Clifford, Collecteana Cliffordiana: Part the First (Paris: M. Nouzu, 1817), 9. The Tilts exemplified the spirit of chivalry, pageantry, and patriotism of Elizabeth’s court. The event evoked a bygone Arthurian age through costuming, allegory, music, and acting by its knights, among whom Cumberland was an eager participant.
The miniature makes reference to the Tilts not only in Cumberland’s symbol-laden armor and the blue lady’s favor: Often taking the form of a ribbon or handkerchief, a lady’s favor was gifted to her chosen knight during a joust or other sporting event during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. It had particular resonance under the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, when this chivalric tradition was revived as a sign of the monarch’s favor. tied to his arm but also in the use of an impresa, a device painted on a pasteboard shield and presented by each knight to the queen.8In the full-length miniature at the National Maritime Museum, Clifford’s impresa, probably the one he bore at the 1590 Accession Day Tilt, hangs from a tree branch. Roy Strong made the intriguing suggestion that Hilliard’s workshop may even have painted imprese (pl.) shields and assisted with the decoration of the Accession Day Tilts. Roy Strong, Artists of the Tudor Court, 133. Hilliard inscribed Cumberland’s device as a motto in curling gold calligraphy along the top edge of the miniature, in Latin: fulmen aquasque fero, meaning “I bear lightning and water.” Paired with a winged red thunderbolt, it probably refers to Cumberland’s naval prowess. Over a twelve-year period, Cumberland fitted out ten privateering fleets and sailed with four of them himself, including the royal ship Elizabeth Bonaventure, which he commanded in the victory against the Spanish Armada: A naval fleet launched in spring 1588 by the Catholic King Philip II of Spain to sail up the English Channel, invade England, and overthrow Queen Elizabeth I in order to reinstate a Catholic monarch on the throne. The Armada, which was generally thought to be invincible, was soundly defeated by the smaller but more agile English navy at the Battle of Gravelines on August 8, 1588. George Clifford, 3rd Earl of Cumberland, brought Queen Elizabeth the news of England’s victory over Spain. in 1588. The stormy sky in the background carries the maritime messaging further, and it may be Hilliard’s earliest departure from the solid blue background he used previously, perhaps at the request of Cumberland himself.9According to Roy Strong, Hilliard first began to abandon the solid blue ground in about 1587, further indicating an approximate date for this miniature. Roy Strong, Artists of the Tudor Court, 133.
Accounts of Cumberland’s life describe him, contrastingly and colorfully, as a pirate and courtier, gambler and knight errant, whose physical beauty, wit, and valor epitomized Elizabethan ideals of masculinity. Most of his naval expeditions, however, ended in failure and financial ruin.10According to his daughter Anne Clifford, in addition to the ruinously expensive naval expeditions, whose infrequent gains rarely compensated for their costs, “an extreme love of horse races, tiltings, bowling matches and shootings . . . and hunting and all such expensive sports did contribute the more to the wasting of his estate.” Quoted in Adam Eaker, The Tudors Art and Majesty in Renaissance England (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2022), 184. His most enduring historical legacy lies in his pursuit of British imperialism through his participation in the slave trade, with the capture of a vessel packed with enslaved Africans, and his role as a founder of the Honourable East India Company (HEIC): A British joint-stock company founded in 1600 to trade in the Indian Ocean region. The company accounted for half the world’s trade from the 1750s to the early 1800s, including items such as cotton, silk, opium, and spices. It later expanded to control large parts of the Indian subcontinent by exercising military and administrative power..11The depredations of Clifford and his ships are best represented by the following passage, unstinting in its violence, taken from the log of Thomas Hood, pilot of Clifford’s ship Red Dragon, after raiding and destroying a town in Sierra Leone from November 4 to 6, 1587, preserved in its original spelling: “The /4/ daye our captayne went Ashor with 150 men to the negers toune And he toocke it And brout ther rys [rice] Abord And burnt there toune And the negers ran into the woods / All saavying [sic] sum that war slayn And thankes be to god we had never A man hurt but cam All safe Abord Agayne … The /5/ daye of November our men went A shor And set rys Abord and burnt the rest of the housys in the negurs toune And brout A bord ropes And pullys that war sum tangamangas And our bot went doun to the outermoust point of the river And burnt A toune And brot Away All the rys that was in the toune. . . . The [6] daye we sarvyd god being sunday.” This account and others are related and analyzed in Philip S. Palmer, “‘All Suche matters as passed on this vyage:’ Early English Travel Anthologies and the Case of John Sarracoll’s Maritime Journal (1586–87),” Huntington Library Quarterly 76, no. 3 (2014): 325–44. Cumberland sent his own ship, the Malice Scourge, to join its first fleet, which would soon engulf the Indian subcontinent.12Spence, Privateering Earl, 177–79. During its tenure as the Honourable East India Company’s flagship, Clifford’s ship Malice Scourge was renamed Red Dragon, “a fusing here of the Earl’s and the Queen’s Tudor symbols in their last joint maritime concern”—not dissimilar from the fusing of royal symbols in Clifford’s suit of Greenwich armor. Hilliard’s portrait of Cumberland, laced with symbolism and allegory, encapsulates the complexities of the Elizabethan age, in which chivalrous courtiers vying for the queen’s favor were poised between new discoveries and bloody conquests.
Notes
-
The Clifford armor, or garniture, was made at the famed Greenwich armory workshop under the direction of Jacob Halder. It is probably the best-preserved and most complete set of Tudor armor known, and its decoration and technical achievements represent the Greenwich school at its height. Its original design is preserved in a detailed drawing in the Almain Album at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Stuart W. Pyhrr, Donald J. La Rocca, and Dirk H. Breiding, The Armored Horse in Europe, 1480–1620 (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2005), 28–29.
-
See Richard T. Spence, The Privateering Earl: George Clifford, 3rd Earl of Cumberland, 1558–1605 (Stroud: Alan Sutton, 1997).
-
Of this miniature, Roy Strong wrote, “This is the earliest portrait of Cumberland dated by Auerbach c. 1590 but surely earlier in date. His hair is shorter than in the likeness recorded in the family triptych, which is probably based on portraits painted in 1589, and in the full-length miniature. The portrait records his appearance in the Greenwich armour he wore at the Accession Day Tilts which he first attended in 1583.” Roy Strong, Artists of the Tudor Court: The Portrait Miniature Rediscovered, 1520–1620 (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1983), 133.
-
The miniatures also differ in format; the Nelson-Atkins portrait, like most of his smaller miniatures, is oval, while the full-length example is rectangular, like the rest of his cabinet miniatures. Nicholas Hilliard, George Clifford, 3rd Earl of Cumberland, ca. 1590, watercolor and bodycolor with gold and silver leaf on vellum, laid on panel, 11 1/4 x 6 15/16 in. (28.5 x 17.6 cm), National Maritime Museum, Royal Museums Greenwich, London, MNT0193, https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/rmgc-object-42140. A third portrait is also a small oval: Nicholas Hilliard (and/or workshop, attrib.), Portrait of George Clifford, 3rd Earl of Cumberland, 1589, watercolor on vellum, Museo Nacional de Arte Decorativo, Buenos Aires, https://museoartedecorativo.cultura.gob.ar/obra/hiliard-nicholas-inglaterra-1547-1619-george-clifford-3er-conde-de-cumberland.
-
Stephen Grancsay, “A Miniature Portrait of the Earl of Cumberland in Armor,” Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 15, no. 5 (January 1957): 120–22.
-
Myriad fleur-de-lys and Tudor roses, each joined by love knots, proclaim Cumberland’s loyalty to his monarch and the Tudor dynasty, compounded by the letter E, for Elizabeth, entwined within a heart at the center of the breastplate. The E is displayed back-to-back, or addorsed (a heraldic term). This is repeated throughout the armor, including on both kneecaps.
-
Clifford’s association with the Accession Day Tilts was such that in 1590, he was appointed Queen’s Champion of the Tilts in an elaborate ceremony. His duties included organizing and presiding over the festivities. That same year, Clifford was praised in a sonnet by Edmund Spenser in an addition to his epic poem The Faerie Queene, proclaiming him as a “Redoubted Lord! In whose courageous mind; the flower of chivalry now blooming fair”; quoted in Arthur Clifford, Collecteana Cliffordiana: Part the First (Paris: M. Nouzu, 1817), 9.
-
While favors were often tied to the arm, George Clifford, 3rd Earl of Cumberland, bore Elizabeth’s favor with particular flair when he picked up a glove she had dropped on the ground and thenceforth wore it pinned to his hat. In the full-length miniature at the National Maritime Museum, Clifford’s impresa, probably the one he bore at the 1590 Accession Day Tilt, hangs from a tree branch. Roy Strong made the intriguing suggestion that Hilliard’s workshop may even have painted imprese (pl.) shields and assisted with the decoration of the Accession Day Tilts. Roy Strong, Artists of the Tudor Court, 133.
-
According to Roy Strong, Hilliard first began to abandon the solid blue ground in about 1587, further indicating an approximate date for this miniature. Roy Strong, Artists of the Tudor Court, 133.
-
According to his daughter Anne Clifford, in addition to the ruinously expensive naval expeditions, whose infrequent gains rarely compensated for their costs, “an extreme love of horse races, tiltings, bowling matches and shootings . . . and hunting and all such expensive sports did contribute the more to the wasting of his estate.” Quoted in Adam Eaker, The Tudors Art and Majesty in Renaissance England (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2022), 184.
-
The depredations of Clifford and his ships are best represented by the following passage, unstinting in its violence, taken from the log of Thomas Hood, pilot of Clifford’s ship Red Dragon, after raiding and destroying a town in Sierra Leone from November 4 to 6, 1587, preserved in its original spelling: “The /4/ daye our captayne went Ashor with 150 men to the negers toune And he toocke it And brout ther rys [rice] Abord And burnt there toune And the negers ran into the woods / All saavying [sic] sum that war slayn And thankes be to god we had never A man hurt but cam All safe Abord Agayne … The /5/ daye of November our men went A shor And set rys Abord and burnt the rest of the housys in the negurs toune And brout A bord ropes And pullys that war sum tangamangas And our bot went doun to the outermoust point of the river And burnt A toune And brot Away All the rys that was in the toune. . . . The [6] daye we sarvyd god being sunday.” This account and others are related and analyzed in Philip S. Palmer, “‘All Suche matters as passed on this vyage:’ Early English Travel Anthologies and the Case of John Sarracoll’s Maritime Journal (1586–87),” Huntington Library Quarterly 76, no. 3 (2014): 325–44.
-
Spence, Privateering Earl, 177–79. During its tenure as the Honourable East India Company’s flagship, Clifford’s ship Malice Scourge was renamed Red Dragon, “a fusing here of the Earl’s and the Queen’s Tudor symbols in their last joint maritime concern”—not dissimilar from the fusing of royal symbols in Clifford’s suit of Greenwich armor.
Provenance
Probably commissioned by the sitter, George Clifford, 3rd Earl of Cumberland (1558–1605), Clifford Castle, Herefordshire, about 1587 [1];
Possibly inherited, erroneously, by his brother, Francis Clifford, 4th Earl of Cumberland (1559–1641) [2];
Possibly by descent, erroneously, to his son, Henry Clifford, 5th Earl of Cumberland (1591/2–1643);
Probably inherited by George Clifford’s daughter, Lady Anne Clifford, 14th Baroness de Clifford (1590–1676), Clifford Castle, Herefordshire, by 1643 [3];
Probably given to her daughter Lady Isabella Sackville (1622–1661), Castle Ashby House, Northamptonshire, by 1661;
Inherited by her husband James Compton, 3rd Earl of Northampton (1622–1681), Castle Ashby House, Northamptonshire, 1661–1681;
By descent to his son, George Compton, 4th Earl of Northampton (1664–1727), Castle Ashby House, Northamptonshire, 1681–1727;
By descent to his daughter Lady Anne Compton, Lady Rushout (d. 1747), Castle Ashby House, Northamptonshire, 1727–1747;
Inherited by her husband, Sir John Rushout, 4th Baronet (1685–1775), Northwick Park, Gloucestershire, 1747–1775;
By descent to their son John Rushout, 1st Baron Northwick (1738–1800), Northwick Park, Gloucestershire, 1775–1800;
By descent to his son John Rushout, 2nd Baron Northwick (1770–1859), Northwick Park, Gloucestershire, 1800–1859;
Purchased at his posthumous sale, The Late Lord Northwick’s Extensive and Magnificent Collection of Ancient and Modern Pictures, Cabinet of Miniatures and Enamels, and Other Choice Works of Art . . . Which will be Sold by Auction by Mr. Phillips, Thirlestane House, Cheltenham, August 5, 1859, lot 779, by Henry Farrer (1798–1866), London, 1859 [4];
Purchased from Henry Farrer by Thomas Whitehead (1825–1897), London, about 1859–1862 [5];
Purchased from Thomas Whitehead by Charles Sotheby (1820–1887), 1862–1887 [6];
Inherited by his half-brother Major General Frederick Edward Sotheby (1837–1909), 1887–1909 [7];
Inherited by his wife Edith Sotheby (d. 1929), Ecton Hall, Northamptonshire, 1909–1929 [8];
Inherited by the cousin of Major Sotheby, Lieutenant-Colonel Herbert George Sotheby (1871–1954), 1929–1954;
By descent to his nephew, Commander Nigel Walter Adeane Sotheby (1896–1980), 1954–1955;
Purchased at his sale, The Sotheby Heirlooms, Sotheby’s, London, October 11, 1955, lot 74, as George Clifford, Third Earl of Cumberland, by John W. (1905–2000) and Martha Jane (1906–2011) Starr, Kansas City, MO, 1955–1958 [9];
Their gift to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1958.
Notes
[1] With thanks to Cara Nordengren for her assistance in compiling this provenance narrative.
[2] In direct conflict with the longstanding Clifford family entail, which specified that all Clifford estates should descend to the eldest heir, regardless of gender, George Clifford willed all of his lands and titles to his brother, Francis Clifford, rather than his sole surviving child, Lady Anne Clifford. The Clifford estates were subsequently inherited by Francis Clifford’s son, Henry, before being restored to Lady Anne Clifford after Henry’s death in 1643, following a prolonged legal fight.
[3] Lady Anne Clifford was Clifford’s daughter and sole surviving child. Her father having died when she was fifteen years old, Lady Anne did not immediately inherit Clifford’s vast estates. In direct conflict with the longstanding Clifford family entail, which specified that all Clifford estates should descend to the eldest heir, regardless of gender, George Clifford had willed all of his lands and titles to his brother, Francis Clifford. Anne was left only £15,000. With the aid of her mother and guardian Margaret (until Anne was of age to do so herself), Anne contested what she rightfully viewed as her inheritance beginning in 1606. In 1643, after four decades of herculean legal battles, Anne finally came into her full inheritance of the Clifford estates and dedicated the rest of her life to restoring her family castles and properties. It is unclear whether George Clifford’s miniature was part of her initial inheritance or if she did not receive it until she came into the full inheritance when her cousin Henry Clifford, the son of Francis Clifford, died in 1643. On Lady Anne and the formative impact of her fight for her inheritance on her patronage, see Alice T. Friedman, “Wife in the English Country House: Gender and the Meaning of Style in Early Modern England,” Women and Art in Early Modern Europe: Patrons, Collectors and Connoisseurs, ed. Cynthia Lawrence (University Park: Pennsylvania State University, 1997), 121–25.
[4] The miniature is described in lot 779 of the Northwick sale catalogue as follows: “George Clifford, Earl of Cumberland, in armour, richly decorated with gold, with the motto, ‘Fulmen aquasque fero.’” The Northwick sale is the earliest documentation we have of the miniature’s provenance, but its descent through members of Clifford’s extended family is based on extensive genealogical research.
[5] According to the Northwick sale catalogue, the Hilliard was purchased by a “Farrer” living at New Bond Street. Henry Farrer was a restorer and miniature painter who occasionally worked for Lord Northwick in the 1840s and 1850s. His address from 1856 to 1866 was 106 New Bond Street, London. It is likely that Farrer and Thomas Whitehead, the subsequent owner of this miniature, were acquainted; both made purchases at the Northwick sale. Jacob Simon, “Henry Farrer,” British Picture Restorers 1600–1950: F, 2009, https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/research/programmes/directory-of-british-picture-restorers/british-picture-restorers-1600-1950-f.
It is possible that Farrer purchased the miniature with the intent to resell it at a higher price—perhaps with Whitehead in mind—after restoring it.
[6] According to the 1955 Sotheby’s sale catalogue, the Hilliard was “purchased by Charles Sotheby from Whitehead in 1862.” According to John Murdoch, “In 1861, Charles Sotheby bought from the dealer Thomas Whitehead a Cooper, signed and dated 1653, for £30. In 1862 he exchanged it in part payment for the Hilliard of Earl of Cumberland, which Whitehead had bought at the Northwick Sale.” John Murdoch, Seventeenth-Century English Miniatures in the Collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum (London: H.M. Stationery Office in association with the Victoria and Albert Museum, 1997), 138.
[7] This miniature was exhibited at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1889; the catalogue states that the objects was “lent by Major-General Sotheby.” Exhibition of Portrait Miniatures (London: Burlington Fine Arts Club, 1889), 61. Major-General Sotheby inherited the estate of his half-brother, Charles Sotheby, in 1862.
[8] Major-General Sotheby willed his estate to his wife Edith Sotheby for her lifetime, after which it was to be inherited by his closest living male heir. Rodney Ingram, “The Manor of Ecton,” Ecton Village, https://www.ectonvillage.co.uk/village-history/ectons-past/ecton-hall/.
[9] Note that the Sotheby family that sold the Hilliard miniature in 1955 is of no relation to the auction house, Sotheby and Co.
Exhibitions
Special Exhibition of Portrait Miniatures, South Kensington Museum, London, June 1865, no. 2642.
Exhibition of Portrait Miniatures, Burlington Fine Arts Club, London, 1889, no. 4.
Exhibition of the Royal House of Tudor, The New Gallery, London, 1890, no. 1112.
Exhibition of Old and Modern Miniatures, City of Manchester Art Gallery, October 29–December 31, 1926, no. 242.
A Loan Exhibition Depicting the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, 22 and 23 Grosvenor Place, London, January 26–March, 1933, no. 468.
Exhibition of British Art c. 1000–1860, Royal Academy of Arts, London, January 6–March 17, 1934, no. 927.
Nicholas Hilliard and Isaac Oliver, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 1947, no. 55 [1].
Reopening of the Arms and Armor Galleries, Metropolitan Museum of Art, May 1956.
The World of Shakespeare, 1564–1616, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, January 10–February 16, 1964; Detroit Institute of Arts, March 10–April 6, 1964, no. 29.
A Kind of Gentle Painting: Elizabethan Miniatures, Scottish Arts Council, Edinburgh, August 16–September 14, 1975, no. 16.
Artists of the Tudor Court: The Portrait Miniature Rediscovered 1520-1620, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, July 4–November 6, 1984, no. 214.
“Proud Northern Lady”: Lady Anne Clifford, 1590–1676, Abbot Hall Art Gallery, Kendal, Cumbria, September 22–November 18, 1990, no. 3.
Notes
[1] The Hilliard miniature was also on loan at the Victoria and Albert Museum from 1947 to 1955. See The Sotheby Heirlooms Part I: Catalogue of the Celebrated Collection of Early English Portrait Miniatures, The Property of the Late Major-General Frederick Edward Sotheby, Ecton Hall, Northampton (London: Sotheby’s, 1955), 40.
References
Catalogue of the Late Lord Northwick’s Extensive and Magnificent Collection of Ancient and Modern Pictures, Cabinet of Miniatures and Enamels, and Other Choice Works of Art, Furniture, Plate, Wines, and Effects, at Thirlestane House, Cheltenham (Cheltenham: Mr. Phillips, August 5, 1859), 72.
South Kensington Museum, Catalogue of the Special Exhibition of Portrait Miniatures, exh. cat. (London: Whittingham and Wilkins, 1865), no. 2642.
Exhibition of Portrait Miniatures, exh. cat. (London: Burlington Fine Arts Club, 1889), no. 4, p. 61, as George Clifford, 3rd of Cumberland.
Exhibition of the Royal House of Tudor, exh. cat. (London: The New Gallery, 1890), no. 1112, p. 214.
Dudley Heath, Miniatures (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1905), xv, 104, (repro.).
Dr. G. C. Williamson, George, Third Earl of Cumberland (1558–1605): His Life and His Voyages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1920), p. 277, pl. XIX, (repro.), as George, Earl of Cumberland.
Exhibition of Old and Modern Miniatures, exh. cat. (Manchester: City of Manchester Art Gallery, 1926), no. 242, p. 32.
A Loan Exhibition Depicting the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, exh. cat. (London: Battley Brothers, 1933), no. 468, p. 65.
Royal Academy of Arts, Exhibition of British Art c. 1000–1860, exh. cat. (London: William Clowes and Sons, 1934), 333.
Graham Reynolds, Nicholas Hilliard and Isaac Oliver, exh. cat. (London: H.M. Stationery Office, 1947), no. 54, p. 31, (repro.).
The Sotheby Heirlooms Part I: Catalogue of the Celebrated Collection of Early English Portrait Miniatures, The Property of the Late Major-General Frederick Edward Sotheby, Ecton Hall, Northampton (London: Sotheby’s, October 11, 1955), 40–41, (repro.), as George Clifford, Third Earl of Cumberland.
“Miniatures from Ecton Hall,” The Times (London) (October 11, 1955): 16, (repro.).
“£35,412 for Ecton Miniatures,” The Times (London) (October 12, 1955): 8.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 15, no. 5 (January 1957): 120, (repro.), as George Clifford, Earl of Cumberland.
Bulletin (The Nelson Gallery and Atkins Museum) 1, no. 2 (December 1958): 15, (repro.), as George Clifford, Earl of Cumberland.
Ross E. Taggart, ed., Handbook of the Collections in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 4th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1959), 135, 264, (repro.) as George Clifford, Earl of Cumberland.
Erna Auerbach, Nicholas Hilliard (Boston: Boston Book and Art Shop, 1961), 115, (repro.).
Martha Jane and John W. Starr, “Collecting Portrait Miniatures,” Antiques 80, no. 5 (November 1961): 438–39, (repro.).
Daphne Foskett, British Portrait Miniatures: A History (London: Methuen, 1963), 44, (repro.), as George Clifford, 3rd Earl of Cumberland, K.G. (1558–1605).
The World of Shakespeare 1564–1616, exh. cat. (Detroit: Detroit Institute of Arts and Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 1964), no. 29, pp. 32–33, (repro.).
Marilyn Stokstad, Renaissance Art Outside Italy (Dubuque: Wm. C. Brown, 1968), 89, as George Clifford, Earl of Cumberland.
Roy Strong, Tudor and Jacobean Portraits (London: H.M. Stationery Office, 1969), no. 101, pp. 1:57, 2:unpaginated, (repro.).
Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 3, p. 10, (repro. front cover), as George Clifford, Earl of Cumberland.
Graham Reynolds, Nicholas Hilliard and Isaac Oliver (London: H.M. Stationery Office, 1971), no. 55, unpaginated, (repro.).
Ross E. Taggart and George L. McKenna, eds., Handbook of the Collections in The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Missouri, vol. 1, Art of the Occident, 5th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1973), 147, (repro.), as George Clifford, Earl of Cumberland.
A Kind of Gentle Painting, exh. cat. (Edinburgh: Scottish Arts Council, 1975), no. 16, unpaginated, (repro.).
Lady Anne Clifford, 1590–1676, exh. cat. (Kendal: Abbot Hall Art Gallery, 1976), no. 3, p. 20, (repro.).
Roy Strong, Artists of the Tudor Court: The Portrait Miniature Rediscovered, 1520–1620, exh. cat. (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1983), no. 214, pp. 133–35, (repro.), as George Clifford, 3rd Earl of Cumberland.
Daphne Foskett, “Pictured in Little: The Portrait Miniature Rediscovered, 1520–1620” Country Life (July 21, 1983): 139.
“Proud Northern Lady”: Lady Anne Clifford, 1590–1676, exh. cat. (Kendal: Abbot Hall Art Gallery, 1990), no. 3, pp. 21–22, as George Clifford, 3rd Earl of Cumberland.
“Miniature Painting,” The New Standard Encyclopedia (Chicago: Standard Educational Corporation, 1990), M-379, (repro.), as Miniature of George Clifford, Earl of Cumberland.
“Miniature,” The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1992), 1149, (repro.), as Portrait of George Clifford, 3rd Earl of Cumberland.
Roger Ward and Patricia J. Fidler, eds., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection (New York: Hudson Hills Press, in association with Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1993), 31, 129–130, 175, (repro.).
Gloria Kury, “‘Glancing Surfaces’: Hilliard, Armour, and the Italian Model” in Albion’s Classicism: The Visual Arts in Britain, 1550–1660, ed. Lucy Ghent (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 405–08, (repro.), as George Clifford, 3rd Earl of Cumberland.
Richard T. Spence, The Privateering Earl (Far Thrupp: Alan Sutton, 1995), no. 2, p. 80, (repro.).
Marilyn Stokstad, Art History (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1999), 743–45, (repro.), as George Clifford, 3rd Earl of Cumberland (1558–1605).
Ann Rosalind Jones and Peter Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 34–36, (repro.), as George Clifford, 3rd Earl of Cumberland.
Deborah Emont Scott, ed., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection (Kansas City, MO: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2008), 84, as Portrait of George Clifford, Third Earl of Cumberland.
Elizabeth Goldring, Nicholas Hilliard: Life of an Artist (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019), 233–34, (repro.), as George Clifford, 3rd Earl of Cumberland.
Elizabeth Cleland and Adam Eaker, The Tudors: Art and Majesty in Renaissance England, exh. cat. (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2022), 184, (repro.).
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