Dr.Brian Walton (born about 1600,died 1661)

Dr.Brian Walton (born about 1600,died 1661)

Dr.Brian Walton (born about 1600,died 1661)

Artist:John Hoskins (British, active by ca. 1615–died 1665)
Date:1657
Medium:Vellum laid on card
Dimensions:Oval, 2 3/4 x 2 1/4 in. (72 x 58 mm)
Classification:Miniatures
Credit Line:Fletcher Fund, 1935

Catalogue Entry

The Artist: John Hoskins was the leading painter of portrait miniatures in England between the death of Nicholas Hilliard in 1619 and the rise to preeminence of his nephew and pupil Samuel Cooper (1608?–1672) in the 1640s. Hoskins began his career as a portrait painter in oils. So far only two documented paintings in this medium by him are known. They are head-and-shoulders portraits of Sir Hamon Le Strange of Hunstanton Hall, Norfolk, and his wife, Alice; her household account book records payments for them in 1617 (Prince Frederick Duleep Singh, Portraits in Norfolk Houses, Norwich, [1927], vol. 1, p. 316, no. 15 [Alice], pp. 317–18, no. 21 [Hamon]; Andrew Moore and Charlotte Crawley, Family & Friends: A Regional Survey of British Portraiture, London, 1992, pp. 84–86, nos. 18 and 19, pls. 55 and 56). It is not known who taught Hoskins the art of limning, but his earliest miniatures, seemingly from about 1615, show resemblances to those of both Nicholas Hilliard (1547–1619) and Isaac Oliver (born about 1565, died 1617). He was greatly patronized by Charles I (1600–1649) and his court; he was influenced at that time by Daniel Mytens (1590?–1648) and then by Van Dyck (1599–1641), who settled in England in 1632. The works of the 1620s and 1630s show a variety of styles, probably due to his employment of assistants, such as his nephews Alexander Cooper (1609–?1660) and Samuel Cooper and his son John Hoskins the Younger (1620/30?–after 1692). The older Hoskins died in relative poverty in 1665. John Hoskins the Younger is known to have practiced as a limner independently from 1655, but no convincing attempts to distinguish his work from his father's have yet been made.

The Miniature: The history of this important miniature, which has had a succession of distinguished owners, can be traced to the earlier years of the eighteenth century. Its first known owner was Sir Everard Fawkener (1684–1758), a successful merchant who became in later life a diplomat. Voltaire was a friend of his and stayed in the late 1720s at his house in Wandsworth. According to the Dictionary of National Biography, Fawkener spent his leisure time "in reading the classics or in collecting ancient coins and medals." As Horace Walpole (1717–1797) recorded when cataloguing his own collection, Fawkener gave the miniature to Sir Robert Walpole (1676–1745); this gift may have been made at about the time Fawkener exchanged commerce for diplomacy and was knighted, that is, about 1735. Sir Robert Walpole had passed the miniature on to his son Horace by about 1743, when the English engraver and antiquary George Vertue (1684–1756) saw it in the latter's collection. It was recognized as an example of Hoskins's finest work in these earliest references, but the sitter's identity caused some confusion. On first seeing it Vertue described it as "so fresh & lively as if it had been done by Cooper" and commented "Qu. who it is," showing that any traditional identification had been lost. However, Walpole, who in 1757 had bought the notebook in which this reference occurs, made the annotation "Serj. Maynard" at this point. Vertue's second reference, made in 1745, shows that he had become aware of this identification; first writing "a Minister," he struck this out and wrote "Serj. Maynard," adding "near or full as well as if done by Cooper." Both in his list of miniatures in the Tribune at Strawberry Hill and in his Anecdotes Walpole repeated this identification, which he may have been the first to propose. He shared Vertue's admiration for the work, though with some reservations, writing in his Anecdotes: "Hoskins, though surpassed by his scholar, the young Cooper, was a very good painter: there is great truth and nature in his heads; but the carnations are too bricky, and want a degradation and variety of tints. I have a head of serjeant Maynard by him, boldly painted and in a manly style, though not without these faults."
This miniature is certainly one of the finest in the Hoskins canon. Murdoch (1979, 1981) lists it among twenty-two miniatures painted between 1645 and 1665 which he thinks may be by John Hoskins the Younger; this hypothesis has not gained widespread acceptance, and there is no reason for removing the work from the mature oeuvre of his father.
Piper (1963) discusses the identification of the sitter as the famous Restoration lawyer Sir John Maynard (1602–1690) and concludes that it is not convincing. He suggests that there are other possibilities, such as Sir John Maynard (1592–1658), the Royalist, or John Maynard (1600–1665), the divine. However, fresh light is thrown on the question by a somewhat enlarged nineteenth-century copy of the miniature in the Royal Collection, Windsor Castle (Reynolds 1999, no. 92), that was listed in an inventory of 1881 as a copy after the Hoskins miniature in the Hamilton collection (the MMA work) and as a portrait of Brian Walton, D.D. (born about 1600, died 1661). Walton edited the polyglot Bible, published in six volumes between 1654 and 1657, and in 1660 was made bishop of Chester. The only recognized portrait of him is the engraving that Pierre Lombart made for the frontispiece of Walton’s Polyglot Bible, 1657 (J. Ingamells, The English Episcopal Portrait 1559–1835: A Catalogue, [New Haven], 1981, p. 400, pl. 296). There is so close a correspondence between that engraving and this miniature that they surely represent the same man. Sir Oliver Millar and Catherine MacLeod have drawn attention to a full-length portrait of the same sitter in the collection of Lord Tollemache which has been published by Ellis Waterhouse (1958, p. 11, no. 1) as of Sir John Maynard by Emmanuel de Critz, dated 1657.

Location : Metropolitan Museum of Art