Details
NICHOLAS HILLIARD (BRITISH, 1547-1619)
King James I of England and VI of Scotland (1566-1625), in white doublet, slashed on bodice and sleeves to reveal black, jewel-set gold buttons, white lace upstand collar, wearing the Lesser George of the Order of the Garter on a blue ribbon around his neck; blue background with gold border, inscribed in gold in the blue background 'Ano Dmni 1609 / Regni 43'
on vellum
oval, 1¾ in. (45 mm.) high, gilt-metal mount
Provenance
According to R. Strong, 'The Leicester House miniatures: Robert Sidney, 1st Earl of Leicester and his circle', The Burlington Magazine, vol. CXXVII, no. 991, October 1985, p. 697, possibly a gift of King James I and Queen Anne to Robert Sidney (1563-1626), 1st Earl of Leicester.
Family collection of the Earls of Leicester, Leicester House, until 1743 ('King James 1st', inventory dated 14 October 1737).
William Perry (d. 1757), Penshurst Place, husband of Elizabeth Sidney (1713-1783), niece of John Sidney, 6th Earl of Leicester (1680-1737) of Penshurst Place.
Acquired from their descendant, Philip Sidney, 2nd Baron De L'Isle and Dudley (1828-1898), Penshurst Place, possibly by Jeffery Whitehead.
With Jeffery Whitehead, in 1889.
Bertram Wodehouse Currie (1827-1896) of Minley Manor, Hampshire, in 1896, purchased for '200l'.
By descent to his son, Laurence Currie (1867-1934), Minley Manor, Hampshire.
By descent to his son, Captain Bertram George Francis Currie, Dingley Hall, Market Harborough; Christie's, London, 27 March 1953, lot 26 (as by N. Hilliard, 160 gns. to Agnew).
With Thomas Agnew & Sons, London.
Greta Shield Heckett (1899-1976) Collection, Pittsburgh, Pa., by 1954; part II, Sotheby's, London, 11 July 1977, lot 126.
Sotheby's, London, 19 October 1981, lot 49 (as Studio of Nicholas Hilliard).
Literature
G. C. Williamson, The History of Portrait Miniatures, London, 1904, I, p. 33, illustrated pl. VII, no. 4 (as King James I by Isaac Oliver, one of the five 'Penshurst' Miniatures, collection of Mr. L. Currie), II, p. 128.
P. Finch, Catalogue of the Collection of Works of Art at Minley Manor, London, 1908, p. 39 (as by Isaac Oliver), illustrated opposite p. 36.
R. W. Goulding, 'The Welbeck Abbey Miniatures', Walpole Society, IV, 1916, p. 35 (as by Nicholas Hilliard, but footnote no. 9 states attributed by Dr Williamson to I. Oliver).
B. Long, British Miniaturists, London, 1929, p. 319 (as by Isaac Oliver).
G. Reynolds, 'Portraits by Nicholas Hilliard and his Assistants of King James I and his Family', The Walpole Society, XXXIV, 1958, p. 19, no. A.6.
E. Auerbach, Nicholas Hilliard, London, 1961, pp. 157, 314-315, no. 160.
R. Strong, The English Renaissance Miniature, London, 1983, p. 123, note 166.
R. Strong, 'The Leicester House Miniatures: Robert Sidney, 1st Earl of Leicester and His Circle', The Burlington Magazine, vol. CXXVII, no. 991, October 1985, p. 697 ('[as one] of the four authentic Penshurst miniatures'), ill. p. 699, no. 41 (as 'Studio of Nicholas Hilliard').
R. Strong, The Tudor and Stuart Monarchy: Pageantry, Painting, Iconography. - II. Elizabethan, Woodbridge, 1995, p. xiii, no. 137 (as Studio of Nicholas Hilliard), p. 246, ill. fig. 137.
G. Reynolds, The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Miniatures in the Collection of Her Majesty The Queen, London, 1999, p. 70.
Exhibited
London, South Kensington Museum, Special Exhibition of Works of Art of the Medieval, Renaissance, and more recent periods, June 1862, section II, no. 2213 (lent by Lord de Lisle [sic] and Dudley).
London, Burlington Fine Arts Club, Exhibition of Portrait Miniatures, 1889, case IX, no. 4 (as by I. Oliver, lent by Jeffery Whitehead).
London, Burlington Fine Arts Club, Catalogue of an Exhibition of Late Elizabethan Art in conjunction with the tercentenary of Francis Bacon, 1926, no. 2, cat. p. 52, pl. XX (as by Isaac Oliver, lent by Mr L. Currie).
Pittsburgh, Pa., Carnegie Institute, Four Centuries of Portrait Miniatures from the Heckett Collection, 1954, no. 28.
.jpg?w=1)
