Portrait of a Man, Said to Be Philip Wharton (1613–1696), Fourth Baron Wharton

Portrait of a Man, Said to Be Philip Wharton (1613–1696), Fourth Baron Wharton

Portrait of a Man, Said to Be Philip Wharton (1613–1696), Fourth Baron Wharton

Artist:John Hoskins (British, active by ca. 1615–died 1665)
Date:1648
Medium:Vellum on prepared card
Dimensions:Oval, 2 3/4 x 2 1/4 in. (69 x 56 mm)
Classification:Miniatures
Credit Line:Bequest of Millie Bruhl Fredrick, 1962

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: When this miniature entered the Metropolitan Museum, it was described as a portrait of Lord Waterford. This title did not exist in the seventeenth century, however, and the identification was no doubt based upon a misreading of the nineteenth-century inscription on the back. The portrait of Lord Wharton by Van Dyck in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, shows him in 1632 aged nineteen and is thus too early to provide a firm basis for comparison. A second portrait, ascribed to Van Dyck or his workshop (Norton Gallery, Palm Beach, Florida; see Erik Larsen, The Paintings of Anthony van Dyck, Freren, 1988, vol. 2, p. 512, no. A305, ill.), bears his name and the date 1639; it shows him at the age of twenty-six and suggests that the identification may conceivably be correct.
Philip (1613–1696), fourth baron Wharton, was the grandson of the first earl of Monmouth. As the elegant young man that Van Dyck depicted, he was prominent at the court of Charles I and Henrietta Maria. He became an ardent Puritan, declaring his opposition to the crown in the Parliament of 1640 and supporting the parliamentary side during the Civil War. At the time this miniature was painted, he was an intimate of Cromwell. He deplored the execution of Charles I and lived to welcome the restoration of Charles II and the accession of William and Mary. Wharton had a fine collection of paintings by Lely and—most notably—Van Dyck (Oliver Millar, "Philip, Lord Wharton, and His Collection of Portraits,” Burlington Magazine 136 [August 1994], pp. 517–30). By the late 1630s he was one of Van Dyck's principal patrons and, according to Horace Walpole, owned six half-lengths and twelve full-lengths by the great Flemish artist.

Location : Metropolitan Museum of Art