Live Auction 1162Centuries of Style, Silver, European Ceramics, Portrait Miniatures and Gold Boxes
NICHOLAS HILLIARD (BRITISH, 1547-1619)
Lot 109 THE PROPERTY OF A PRIVATE COLLECTOR

NICHOLAS HILLIARD (BRITISH, 1547-1619)

Closed27 November 2013

Price Realised

GBP 17,500

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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

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).

Specialist note

Hilliard continued in the role of official limner after James I ascended the throne but tried to ensure that no two portraits of the King were exactly the same. This miniature of King James I falls into the second portrait type of images of the King first identified by Graham Reynolds in 1958 (supra) and the present work is the earliest dated miniature in this group. Reynolds divided the portraits of the King into three groups; Type I (c. 1603-1608) where the King is shown in a tall plumed hat which is pushed off his forehead to show some of his hair at the front; Type II (c. 1609-1614), as in the present miniature, where the King is shown hatless with an emphasis on the sitter's eyes and wearing a shaped doublet, and Type III (c. 1614-1619) where the King is depicted older, hatless and his head is larger in proportion to the size of the miniature. The miniature of James I in the Royal Collection (G. Reynolds, The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Miniatures in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen, London, 1999, no. 28, illustrated p. 28) fits Type II of this group and shows the King against a red wet-in-wet background wearing a blue doublet. A further example in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery (S. Lloyd, Portrait Miniatures from the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, 2004, no. 4, pp. 34-35, illustrated pl. 2) shows the King in a white doublet against a blue background with a gold inscription 'JACOBUS D G MAG BRIT FR ET HIB REX'.