London
Where did Nicholas Hilliard work from 1578 to 1619?
Nicholas Hilliard Nicholas Hilliard ( c . 1547 – 7 January 1619 ) was an English goldsmith and limner best known for his portrait miniatures of members of the courts of Elizabeth I and James I of England . He mostly painted small oval miniatures , but also some larger cabinet miniatures , up to about ten inches tall , and at least two famous half-length panel portraits of Elizabeth . He enjoyed continuing success as an artist , and continuing financial troubles , for forty-five years . His paintings still exemplify the visual image of Elizabethan England , very different from that of most of Europe in the late sixteenth century . Technically he was very conservative by European standards , but his paintings are superbly executed and have a freshness and charm that has ensured his continuing reputation as the central artistic figure of the Elizabethan age , the only English painter whose work reflects , in its delicate microcosm , the world of Shakespeares earlier plays . Early life and family . Hilliard was born in Exeter in 1547 . He was the son of Richard Hilliard ( 1519–1594 ) of Exeter , Devon , also spelt Hellyer , a goldsmith who became a staunch Protestant and was Sheriff of Exeter in 1568 , by his marriage to Laurence , daughter of John Wall , a City of London goldsmith . He was one of four boys : two others became goldsmiths , and one a clergyman . Hilliard may have been a close relative of Grace Hiller ( Hilliar ) , first wife of Theophilus Eaton ( 1590–1657 ) , the co-founder of New Haven Colony in America . He appears to have been attached at a young age to the household of the leading Exeter Protestant John Bodley , the father of Thomas Bodley who founded the Bodleian Library in Oxford . John Bodley went into exile on the accession of the Catholic Queen Mary I of England , and on 8 May 1557 Hilliard , then ten years old , was recorded in Geneva as one of an eleven-strong Bodley family group at a Calvinist service presided over by John Knox . Calvinism does not seem to have struck with Hilliard , but the fluent French he acquired abroad was later useful . Thomas Bodley , two years older , continued an intensive classical education under leading scholars in Geneva , but it is not clear to what extent Hilliard was given similar studies . Hilliard painted a portrait of himself at the age of 13 in 1560 and is said to have executed one of Mary , Queen of Scots , when he was eighteen years old . Hilliard apprenticed himself to the Queens jeweller Robert Brandon ( d . 1591 ) , a goldsmith and city chamberlain of London , and Sir Roy Strong suggests that Hilliard may also have been trained in the art of limning by Levina Teerlinc during this period . She was the daughter of Simon Bening , the last great master of the Flemish manuscript illumination tradition , and became court painter to Henry VIII after Holbeins death . After his seven years apprenticeship , Hilliard was made a freeman of the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths in 1569 . He set up a workshop with his younger brother John ; another brother was also a goldsmith , and the youngest a clergyman . He married Brandons daughter Alice ( 1556–1611 ) in 1576 and they had seven children . Career . Royal limner . Hilliard emerged from his apprenticeship at a time when a new royal portrait painter was desperately needed . Two panel portraits long attributed to him , the Phoenix and Pelican portraits , are dated c . 1572–76 . Hilliard was appointed limner ( miniaturist ) and goldsmith to Elizabeth I at an unknown date ; his first known miniature of the Queen is dated 1572 , and already in 1573 he was granted the reversion of a lease by the Queen for his good , true and loyal service . In 1571 he had made a booke of portraitures for the Earl of Leicester , the Queens favourite , which is likely to be how he became known to the Court ; several of his children were named after Leicester and his circle . Despite this patronage , in 1576 the recently married Hilliard left for France with no other intent than to increase his knowledge by this voyage , and upon hope to get a piece of money of the lords and ladies here for his better maintenance in England at his return , carefully reported the English Ambassador in Paris , Sir Amyas Paulet , with whom Hilliard stayed for much of the time . Francis Bacon was attached to the embassy , and Hilliard did a miniature of him in Paris . He remained until 1578–79 , mixing in the artistic circles round the court , staying with Germain Pilon and George of Ghent , respectively the Queens sculptor and painter , and meeting Ronsard , who perhaps paid him the rather double-edged compliment later quoted by Hilliard : the islands indeed seldom bring forth any cunning man , but when they do it is in high perfection . He appears in the papers of the duc dAlençon , a suitor of Queen Elizabeth , under the name of Nicholas Belliart , peintre anglois , in 1577 , receiving a stipend of 200 livres . The miniature of Madame de Sourdis , certainly the work of Hilliard , is dated 1577 , in which year she was a maid of honour at the French court ; and other portraits which are his work are believed to represent Gabrielle dEstrées ( niece of Madame de Sourdis ) , la princesse de Condé , and Madame de Montgomery . Money was a persistent problem for Hilliard . The typical price for a miniature seems to have been £3 – which compares well with prices charged by Cornelis Ketel in the 1570s of £1 for a head-and-shoulders portrait and £5 for a full-length . A portrait of the Earl of Northumberland cost £3 in 1586 . Around the year 1574 Hilliard invested in a gold mine in Scotland with Cornelius de Vos and lost money . In 1599 Hilliard secured an annual allowance from the Queen of £40 , and in 1617 managed to obtain a monopoly on producing miniatures and engravings of James I , something Elizabeth had refused in 1584 . Nonetheless , he was briefly imprisoned in Ludgate Prison that year , after standing surety for the debt of another , and being unable to produce the amount . His father-in-law evidently had little trust in his financial acumen ; his will of 1591 provided for his daughter by an allowance administered by the Goldsmiths Company . The same year the Queen gave him £400 , a large amount , after he made a second Great Seal , and perhaps bearing in mind that he had not had an annuity . After his return from France he had invested in a scheme , or perhaps scam , for gold-mining in Scotland , which he still remembered bitterly twenty-five years later . During a low point in his finances , in July 1601 Hilliard wrote to the Secretary of State Robert Cecil acknowledging the annuity of £40 , but asking permission to retire from London and live more cheaply in the countryside . He explained that he had trained apprentices who now competed with him in the private painting market . Hilliard asked that Cecil employ his son as a clerk , because he could not keep him in his own trade . 21st century research at Waddesdon Manor has transformed our understanding of his work as two large-scale paintings have been newly attributed to him . The portraits , of Sir Amyas Paulet and Elizabeth , are painted on French oak panels , not the Baltic oak commonly used in England , and are thought to date to Hilliards time in France . The new data supports Sir Roy Strongs 1983 attribution of the portrait of Elizabeth to Hilliard . Later career . After his return from France he lived and worked in a house in Gutter Lane , off Cheapside , from 1579 to 1613 , when his son and pupil Laurence took it over , carrying on in business for many decades . Hilliard had moved to an unknown address in the parish of St Martins-in-the-Fields , out of the city and nearer the Court . Strong describes the opening of the shop as a revolution which soon broadened the clientele for miniatures from the Court to the gentry , and by the end of the century to well-off city merchants . Apart from Laurence , who continued in a feeble version of his fathers style , his pupils included Isaac Oliver , by far the most important , and Rowland Lockey . He appears to have given lessons to amateurs also ; a letter from a young lady being finished in London in 1595 says : For my drawing , I take an hour in the afternoon .. . My Lady. . telleth me , He continued to work as a goldsmith , and produced some spectacular picture boxes or jewelled lockets for miniatures , worn round the neck , such as the Lyte Jewel in the British Museum , which , typically , was given by James I ( more generous in this respect than Elizabeth ) to a courtier , Thomas Lyte , in 1610 . The Armada Jewel , given by Elizabeth to Sir Thomas Heneage and the Drake Pendant given to Sir Francis Drake are the best known examples . As part of the cult of the Virgin Queen , courtiers were rather expected to wear the Queens likeness , at least at Court . Elizabeth had her own collection of miniatures , kept locked in a cabinet in her bedroom , wrapped in paper and labelled , with the one labelled My Lords picture containing a portrait of Leicester . His appointment as miniaturist to the Crown included the old sense of a painter of illuminated manuscripts and he was commissioned to decorate important documents , such as the founding charter of Emmanuel College , Cambridge ( 1584 ) , which has an enthroned Elizabeth within an elaborate framework of Flemish-style Renaissance ornament . He also seems to have designed woodcut title-page frames and borders for books , some of which bear his initials . As a New Years day gift in 1584 , Hilliard presented Queen Elizabeth wirh a picture of the story of five wise and foolish virgins . He was in high favour with James I as well as with Elizabeth , receiving from the king a special patent of appointment , dated 5 May 1617 , granting him a sole licence for royal portraits in engraved form for twelve years ; he had already been producing these , although probably usually using the immigrant Renold Elstrack to actually engrave the plates . Jamess more lavish presentation of portraits had its effect on the quality of the work from the Hilliard workshop . When the Earl of Rutland returned from an embassy to Denmark , sixteen members of his party were given chains of gold with the kings picture , and others received just a picture . The esteem of his contemporaries for Hilliard is testified to by John Donne , who in a poem called The Storm ( 1597 ) praises the work of this artist . He died on about 3 January 1619 and was buried on 7 January 1619 in the church of St Martins-in-the-Fields , Westminster , leaving in his will twenty shillings to the poor of the parish , thirty between his two sisters , some goods to his maidservant , and all the rest of his effects to his son , Lawrence Hilliard , his sole executor . By far the largest collection of his work is in the Victoria and Albert Museum , London . The National Portrait Gallery and British Museum in London have several others . The conditions in which miniatures have been kept ensure that many remain in excellent condition , and have avoided the attention of restorers , although fading of pigments , and oxidization of silver paint are common . Style . He was the author of an important treatise on miniature painting , now called The Art of Limning ( c . 1600 ) , preserved in the Bodleian Library . Although it was once believed that the author of that treatise was John de Critz , Serjeant Painter to James I , from instructions by Hilliard for the benefit of one of his pupils , perhaps Isaac Oliver , more recent scholarship holds that the Art can be dated rather closely and established convincingly as the work of Hilliard . The masters mentioned in The Art of Limning are Hans Holbein the Younger , Henry VIIIs court painter , and Albrecht Dürer , who he probably only knew from his prints . Both were dead by the time of Hilliards birth , and in many respects he is more conservative even than Holbein . He also learned from French art , including their chalk drawings , and refers to the artist and theoretical writer Gian Paolo Lomazzo . English art was distinctly provincial , and Hilliards art is a world away from that of the early-Baroque Italian artists of his time , or his close contemporary El Greco ( 1541–1614 ) . In the Art of Limning he cautioned against all but the minimal use of chiaroscuro modelling that we see in his works , reflecting the views of his patron Elizabeth : seeing that best to show oneself needeth no shadow of place but rather the open light .. . Her Majesty . . chose her place to sit for that purpose in the open alley of a goodly garden , where no tree was near , nor any shadow at all .. . He emphasises the need to catch the grace in countenance , in which the affections appear , which can neither be well used nor well-judged of but by the wiser sort . So the wise drawer should watch and catch these lovely graces , witty smilings , and these stolen glances which suddenly like lightning pass and another countenance taketh place . His normal technique ( except for duplicates of royal images ) was to paint the whole face in the presence of the sitter , probably in at least two sittings . He kept a number of prepared flesh-coloured blanks ready , in different shades , to save time on laying the carnation ground . He then painted the outlines of the features very faintly with a pencil , actually a very fine pointed squirrel-hair brush , before filling these out by faint hatchings . He added to the techniques available , especially for clothes and jewels , often exploiting the tiny shadows cast by thick dots of paint to give a three-dimensionality to pearls and lace . A few half-finished miniatures give a good idea of his working technique . He probably made few drawings ; certainly few have survived . His style shows little development after the 1570s , apart from developing some technical refinements , except that many of his later repetitions of James I and his family are much weaker than his early works . James did not like sitting for his portrait and Hilliard probably had few sittings with him . From the 1590s on his old pupil Isaac Oliver was a competitor , who was appointed as Limner to the new Queen Anne of Denmark in 1604 , and then to Henry , Prince of Wales when he established his own household in 1610 . Oliver had travelled abroad and developed a more modern style than his master , and was certainly better at perspective drawing , though he could not match Hilliard in freshness and psychological penetration . Gallery . Portrait miniatures . Elizabeth I