Circle of Nicholas Hillard, Portrait of a Woman, ca. 1585

Chicago:

Blythe Sobol, “Circle of Nicholas Hillard, Portrait of a Woman, ca. 1585,” 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/10.37764/8322.5.1106.4033.

MLA:

Sobol, Blythe. “Circle of Nicholas Hillard, Portrait of a Woman, ca. 1585,” 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: 10.37764/8322.5.1106.4033.

Many studies of the development of English miniature painting in the Tudor era focus almost exclusively on Nicholas Hilliard (ca. 1547–1619), as if he were the only painter of portrait miniatures under Queen Elizabeth I until the ascension of his pupil and rival painter, Isaac Oliver (ca. 1565–1617). While this perception and understanding is changing with more focused scholarship, that narrative prevails largely because so little is known about the earliest years of miniature painting or of Hilliard’s students, followers, and workshop, as well as his own training. As a result, miniatures that even remotely resemble the style of Hilliard are often attributed to him. More recently, scholars such as Edward Town have taken steps to rectify this misperception and to recover, to the degree possible, the stories and works of far lesser-known painters of miniatures, if only to reclaim their names.¹

At the Nelson-Atkins, there are two such examples of miniatures long attributed to Hilliard that are probably not painted by his hand: the present example, Portrait of a Woman, and her counterpart, Portrait of a Man (Fig. 1, F58-60/71). They have been paired together with matching cases since at least the nineteenth century, the approximate period when their mid-sixteenth-century reproduction mounts were made at the behest of an enterprising dealer. While it is possible the relationship of the sitters is genuine, perhaps marital, they were more likely joined at the time that their cases were added, to make them more appealing to collectors.² Until the sitters’ identities—or at least the miniatures’ provenances—can be uncovered, any relation between them will be difficult to determine.

The blue background, along with the sitters’ sober black attire and the peachy tones along their facial contours, are present in countless miniatures made in the second half of the sixteenth century, including those by Hilliard and many other artists working in the same style. These consistencies could speak to training in Hilliard’s workshop or to a shared aesthetic that appealed to patrons as well as sitters and that many artists therefore tried to replicate.

Portrait of a Woman most closely follows Hilliard’s style, particularly in the doubled string of pearls clasped around the sitter’s neck, with a glinting gold medallion made reflective with a dash of white paint. Tiny black splotches on the pearls are probably silver that has since oxidized; originally, they would have added even more luminosity. Hilliard was an accomplished goldsmith and used shell gold and silver to bring sheen to gemstones. In his treatise on painting, written around 1600, Hilliard wrote at length about his technique for painting jewels, inviting an encomium from the poet Henry Constable, who wrote in 1590 that, before Hilliard, “no man knew aright/ to give to stones and pearls true dye and light.”³

The dark-haired woman is elegantly but modestly dressed in the fashion of the burgeoning, prosperous middle classes in France, resembling the burghers’ wives often painted by Hilliard and artists in his circle.⁴ She wears a large white ruff, whose edges are faintly overlaid with painted point lace, as well as a black cap and black dress; any details on her clothing have been lost to fading and abrasion and may have been minimal to begin with.⁵ The sitter in Portrait of a Man, like the woman with whom he has traditionally been paired, wears a white ruff along with a black doublet, enlivened by a row of gold buttons down the center and side seams. The modeling of his features is flat and abraded, and the background is overpainted, complicating attempts to attribute this miniature on the basis of style.

The flatness and compromised condition of both miniatures make it difficult to attribute them. They are probably not by Hilliard but rather by an artist familiar with his style and technique. Their resemblance to French miniatures of the period suggests the artist could have been French, perhaps someone who knew Hilliard, or saw his work during his time in France from 1576–78.⁶ Their sitters may be French as well. Whether these miniatures are by the same artist or by two different painters, they are probably both by painters had the opportunity to study his works. In particular, for Portrait of a Woman, the artist seems to have studied Hilliard’s manner of painting precious stones. Angled at a three-quarters view, the sitter regards the viewer with an air of faint amusement, the corners of her mouth slightly upturned. Perhaps she waits for the secret of her identity, and the artist who painted her, to be uncovered.

Notes

1. Edward Town, “A Biographical Dictionary of London Painters: 1547–1625,” Volume of the Walpole Society 76 (2014): 1–235. As Town has shown, while Hilliard’s “secretive nature” has obfuscated the recovery of these circumstances, it may also have been a strategy to protect certain of Hilliard’s training and techniques and to cement his status and legacy as the greatest miniaturist of his time. Edward Town, “A Portrait of the Miniaturist as a Young Man: Nicholas Hilliard and the Painters of 1560s London,” British Art Studies 17 (September 2020), https://doi.org/10.17658/issn.2058-5462/issue-17/etown.

2. While both miniatures date to the last quarter of the sixteenth century, their attractive cases, likely dating to the nineteenth century, were made to look older than they are, with a newer construction that opens from the front. According to visiting conservator Carol Aiken, 2017, Nelson-Atkins curatorial files.

3. Nicholas Hilliard, A Treatise Concerning the Arte of Limning, ed. R. K. R. Thornton and T. G. S. Cain (Ashington: Mid Northumberland Arts Group, 1981); Henry Constable, “To Mr. Hilliard upon Occasion of a Picture He Made of My Ladie Rich,” in Joan Grundy, ed., The Poems of Henry Constable (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1960), 158.

4. Nicholas Hilliard, An Unknown Woman, 1602, watercolor on vellum stuck onto plain card, 2 1/3 x 1 3/4 in. (5.9 x 4.4 cm), Victoria and Albert Museum, London, https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O74885/an-unknown-woman-portrait-miniature-hilliard-nicholas.

5. The cap is so thinly painted—and abraded—that hints of the blue background are speckled throughout. It may be a style of headdress known as a bongrace, popular between 1530 and 1615. This style was often worn as sun protection, with the back flap of a French hood flipped up and placed over the top of the head to shade the face. A piece of stiffened black velvet, worn flat over the crown and folded at a right angle on each side of the head, was sometimes worn to create the same effect. This style was also sometimes called a cornet or a shadow. Georgine de Courtais, Women’s Hats, Headdresses, and Hairstyles (Mineola: Dover, 2013), 44.

6. With thanks to Stephen Lloyd, Céline Cachaud, and Charlotte Bolland for their observations on the date and culture of this intriguing pair of miniatures. See their notes, April 2024, Nelson-Atkins curatorial files.

Mr. John W. (1905–2000) and Mrs. Martha Jane (1906–2011) Starr, Kansas City, MO, by 1958;

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

The Starr Foundation Collection of Miniatures, The Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, December 8, 1972–January 14, 1973, no cat., no. 4, as Unknown Lady.

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), 264, as Portrait of a Lady.

Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 4, p. 10, (repro.), as Unknown Lady.