George Charles Williamson

“ His work is remarkable for the extreme accuracy of the drawing, the elaborate finish of all the details, and the exquisite completeness of the whole portrait. He must have been a man of high intelligence, and of great penetration, intensely interested in his work, and with considerable ability to represent the character of his sitter in his portraits. His colouring is perhaps not specially remarkable, nor from the point of style can his pictures be considered specially beautiful, but in perfection of drawing he has hardly any equal. ”

“ The writing is as a rule very florid, full of exquisite curves and flourishes, and more elaborate than the more formal handwriting of Nicholas Hilliard. The colour scheme adopted by the son is richer and more varied than that used by the father, and Lawrence Hilliard’s miniatures are not so hard as are those of Nicholas, and are marked by more shade and a greater effect of atmosphere. ”

“ HILLIARD, NICHOLAS (c. 1537–1619) , the first true English miniature painter, is said to have been the son of Richard Hilliard of Exeter, high sheriff of the city and county in 1560, by Lawrence, daughter of John Wall, goldsmith, of London, and was born probably about 1537. He was appointed goldsmith, carver and portrait painter to Queen Elizabeth, and engraved the Great Seal of England in 1586. ”

“ By his first wife he had three children, Anne, a sculptor, William, and Raphael, painters; by his second, two sons, Michiel, a painter, and Conrad, Coxcie painted several large works for the Emperor Charles V and for Philip II, King of Spain, to whom he was court painter. He designed thirty-two subjects from the fable of Cupid and Psyche, which were engraved, and, in conjunction with Van Orley, he directed the execution of some tapestry made from the designs of Raphael. ”

“ His religious life is the key to his complex character, as it actuated his whole career. He obtained the gold medal at the Royal Academy for figure drawing in 1770 and exhibited from the beginning of the Academy down to 1805. He was the finest painter in crayons England ever produced, and although he painted in oil, in water-colours and in miniature, it was by his works in crayon that his reputation was made. ”

“ A piece of the artist’s handwriting is to be seen at the back of one of his miniatures in the Welbeck Abbey collection, and one of his drawings in black chalk is in the University Gallery at Oxford. His own portrait of himself is in the collection of Mr J. Pierpont Morgan. ”

“ Some contemporary inscriptions on the miniatures at Ham House record them as the work of “Old Hoskins,” but the fact of the existence of a younger artist of the same name is settled by a miniature in the Pierpont Morgan collection, signed by Hoskins, and bearing an authentic engraved inscription on its contemporary frame to the effect that it represents the duke of Berwick at the age of twenty-nine in 1700. ”

“ His pictures of laundry-maids especially were very popular in their time, and were reproduced in mezzotint. They represented ladies of some importance who desired to be painted, according to the fashion of the day, engaged in domestic work. Morland’s mother was a Frenchwoman, who possessed a small independent property of her own; she is believed to have been the Maria Morland who exhibited twice at the Royal Academy in 1785 and 1786, although some writers have stated that Maria Morland was not the mother, but one of the sisters of George Morland. ”

“ At a very early age Morland produced sketches of remarkable promise, exhibiting some at the Royal Academy in 1773, when he was but ten years old, and continuing to exhibit at the Free Society in 1775 and 1776, and at the Society of Artists in 1777, and then sending again to the Royal Academy in 1778, 1779 and 1780. ”

“ His death occurred in 1617, and he was buried in the church of St Anne, Blackfriars. He was probably a pupil of Nicholas Hilliard, and connected with his wife, whose name is unknown, with the artists Gheeraerts and De Critz. He was an exceedingly expert miniature painter, and splendid examples of his work can be seen at Montagu House, Windsor Castle, Sherborne Castle and in the collections of Mr J. Pierpont Morgan and the late Baroness Burdett-Coutts. ”

“ COSWAY, RICHARD (c. 1742–1821) , English miniature painter, was baptized in 1742; his father was master of Blundell’s school, Tiverton, where Cosway was educated, and his uncle mayor of that town. He it was who, in conjunction with the boy’s godfather, persuaded the father to allow Richard to proceed to London before he was twelve years old, to take lessons in drawing, and undertook to support him there. On his arrival, the youthful artist won the first prize given by the newly founded Society of Arts, of the money value of five guineas. ”

“ The work of both painters is distinguished by breadth, precision and a charming scheme of colouring, and the unfinished works of the elder brother are amongst some of the most beautiful miniatures ever produced. ”

“ In the following year he died in Denmark. He was a Huguenot, and was said to possess secret colours in enamel, especially a blue, which were not known to his Petitot relations. His work in England is of great rarity, Lord Dartrey possessing the finest example, and there are two remarkable works in the Pierpont Morgan collection and one at Windsor Castle. Two in the Propert collection have been lost sight of. ”

“ He was haughtily certain of the value of his own art, and was determined to paint in cold, ashen colouring, with livid, startling effect, the gaunt and extraordinary figures that he beheld with his eccentric genius. ”

“ His works are of great rarity, and the chief are a series representing the king and queen of Bohemia and their children, in the possession of the German emperor; some very remarkable portraits belonging to the queen of Holland, and others in the possession of the king of Sweden and in various Swedish galleries. ”

“ In his paintings he bestowed special care on the figures of women, and they are well modelled and invariably graceful. In male figures he too often exaggerated the anatomy and selected awkward and unreasonable attitudes. ”

“ An artist who is better known to the general collector is William Faithorne (1616–1691) He was the pupil of Sir Robert Peake, the engraver, but derived much of his skill from the time he spent with Nanteuil, whose involved minute style he closely followed, triumphing over technical difficulties with great success. There are important drawings by him in the Bodleian, at Welbeck Abbey and at Montagu House, and two fine portraits in the British Museum. ”

“ He lived in Henrietta St., Covent Garden, and frequented the Covent Garden Coffee-House. Pepys, who makes many references to him, tells us he was an excellent musician, playing well upon the lute, and also a good linguist, speaking French with ease. ”

“ It is a strangely individual work, representing Spanish character even more truthfully than did any Spanish artist, and it gathers up all the fugitive moods, the grace and charm, the devices and defects of a single race, and gives them complete stability in their wavering expressions.
Between 1595 and 1600, El Greco executed two groups of paintings in the church of San José at Toledo, and in the hospital of La Caridad, at Illescas. Besides these, he is known to have painted thirty-two portraits, several manuscripts, and many paintings for altar-pieces in Toledo and the neighbourhood. ”

“ In 1785 he went to India, visiting the native courts, painting a large number of miniatures, and making many beautiful sketches. His sight failed him in 1797, and he died in Hampstead in 1810. The bulk of his possessions came into the hands of his natural son, William Upcott, the book collector. From him the British Museum acquired a large number of papers relating to Humphry. He was Opie’s first master, and is alluded to in some lines by Hayley. His miniatures are exquisite in detail and delightful in colouring. ”

“ He was probably attracted by the prospect of participating in the decoration of the Escorial, and he appears to have settled down in Toledo, where his first works were the paintings for the high altar of Santo Domingo, and his famous picture of “The Disrobing of Christ” in the sacristy of the cathedral. It was in connexion with this last-named work that he proved refractory, and the records of a law-suit respecting the price to be paid to him give us the earliest information of the artist’s sojourn in Spain. ”

“ His exquisite pencil portrait drawings, slightly tinted in colour, usually from the reverse, are well known, and many of them are of remarkable beauty. Several volumes of sketches for these drawings are still in existence. Downman is believed to have been “pressed” for the navy as a young man, and on his escape settled down for a while in Cambridge, eventually coming to London, and later (1804) going to reside in Kent in the village of West Malling. ”

“ For more than a generation his work was hardly known, but it is now gaining rapidly in importance, and its true position is more and more recognized. Some examples of the artist’s own handwriting have been discovered in Toledo, and Señor Don Manuel Cossia of Madrid has spent many years collecting information for a work dealing with the artist. ”

“ In some instances in Forster's work the lines representing the modelling of the face are so line as to be quite indistinguishable without the aid of a glass. His work can be studied at Welbeck Abbey, in the Holburne Museum at Bath, in the Victoria and Albert Museum and elsewhere. ”

“ PLUMBAGO DRAWINGS. What we should now speak of as pencil drawings were in the 17th and 18th centuries usually known as drawings "in plumbago," and there is a group of artists whose work is remarkable for their exquisite portraits drawn with finely pointed pieces of graphite and upon vellum. ”

“ He continued the active pursuit of his profession down to 1813, when he retired, and his fee-book, still in existence, records the names of his sitters, and the amount paid for each portrait, proving that he painted 4853 miniatures during that period of thirty-nine years, and that his professional income for many years exceeded £1200 a year. During the greater part of his life he resided in Hertford Street, Mayfair, where he lived till he retired. ”

“ He is one of the most interesting personalities in the little group of water-colour painters which included Frederick Walker and A. B. Houghton, a group whose style was directly derived from the practice of drawing upon wood for book illustration. He was one of the most delightful book illustrators of his day, poetic in imagination, with considerable inventive pow er and an admirable sense of colour. As he died young his works are few, but their promise was so great that had he lived he would probably have attained a very high position His early life was one of considerable privation. ”

“ He married in 1781 Maria Hadfield, who survived him many years, and died in Italy in January 1838, in a school for girls which she had founded, and which she had attached to an important religious order devoted to the cause of female education, known as the Dame Inglesi. ”

“ He lived several years in Tours, and there it was he met his wife, who was the daughter of a jeweller. He is recorded as living in Tours in 1522, and there is a reference to his wife’s residence in the same town in 1523, but in 1529 they were both settled in Paris, probably in the neighbourhood of the parish of Ste Innocent, in the cemetery of which they were buried. ”

“ He died on the 22nd of December 1572, shortly after the massacre of St Bartholomew, and his will, mentioning his sister and his two illegitimate daughters, and dealing with the disposition of a considerable amount of property, is still in existence. ”

“ The earlier miniature painters also drew in this manner, notably Hilliard in preparing designs for jewels and seals, and Isaac and Peter Oliver in portraits By Isaac Oliver there is a fine drawing in Lord Derby's collection ”

“ They are to be distinguished by the peculiar wiry treatment of the hair, and by the large full expressive eyes Plimer invariably gave to his female sitters, eyes resembling those of his own wife and daughters. ”