The present portrait by the Flemish artist Paul van Somer, painted around 1620 when the sitter was a mature woman in her forties, is one of a number to adorn various English manors and estates, including three-quarter-length versions at Sherborne Castle and at Welbeck Abbey. She was also painted in 1622 by Marcus Gheeraerts, full-length, in a last great, glittering flourish of a style of full-length court portraiture that, by the late Jacobean period, had already become somewhat passé(with The Weiss Gallery, 1998, now in the Burrell Collection, Glasgow).[1]

The most similar version of our portrait by van Somer resides in the National Portrait Gallery, London, also on panel. By 1620 the countess would have been very much in her prime at the Jacobean court, and van Somer has skilfully represented the artifice of Elizabeth’s well-preserved powdered skin and rouged cheeks. She wears a costly black silk gown with slashes that reveal red and gold embroidered silk beneath, and a fashionable saffron lace ruff with matching cuffs and headdress. Her jewels are impressive, with a long double-strung quartz or agate necklace on a red thread across her shoulders, with a diamond studded ‘S’ for Southampton, and a blue enameled miniature case to which she gestures with her right hand (presumably containing a portrait of her husband.[2] Her earring is unusual, with red stones (rubies or almandine pyrope garnets) linked together and then looped up at each end for attachment and she has an unusual double-ear piercing.[3]

‘Faire Mrs. Varnon [sic.]’ was in her youth one of the most celebrated beauties at court, chosen by Elizabeth I to be a Maid of Honour in chief. Several references to her occur in the ‘gossiping letters’ of the Elizabethan official and businessman, Rowland Whyte, whose epistles were first posthumously published in 1746 as Letters and Memorials of State, (ed. Arthur Collins), providing an insightful context to the latter stages of the Elizabethan court. In them he famously observed how ‘My Lord of Southampton doth with to[o] much familiarity court the faire Mrs Varnon’.[4] Unsurprisingly, in 1598, on discovering she was pregnant, Elizabeth and her lover secretly married, to the ageing queen’s gravest displeasure. By 3 September she had learned of the marriage and consigned Elizabeth to the Fleet Prison.

Elizabeth’s lover and spouse, Henry Wriothesley, 3^rd Earl of Southampton (1573 – 1624), is today renowned as William Shakespeare’s friend and patron, the dedicatee and ‘fair youth’ of his sonnets, and a cousin to Robert Devereaux, 2^nd Earl of Essex. Elizabeth herself was the daughter of John Vernon of Hodnet, Shropshire, by his wife Elizabeth Devereux, whose grandfathers were the Viscount Hereford and the Earl of Huntingdon. Both her maternal grandparents were descended from King Edward III.

On relegating Elizabeth to the Fleet Prison, the queen ordered Southampton (who at the time was in France) to return to England forthwith, but he remained in Paris for two months, losing large sums in gambling. By the beginning of November he was back in England, also lodged in the Fleet, where he remained for a month, during which time Elizabeth gave birth to their daughter, Penelope. After their release, the couple were never again received into the queen’s favour. Indeed, Southampton was deeply involved in the Essex rebellion of 1601, and in February of that year he was sentenced to death, later life imprisonment.[5] Luckily for the couple, on the accession of James I in 1603, they resumed their place at court and received numerous honours.

That Wriothesley had a love of literature is apparent not only through his patronage of Shakespeare, but also in a legacy of books which he bequeathed to the library of St. John’s College, Cambridge, described in a letter by Elizabeth to Dr. Owen Gwyn, Master of St. John’s, in August 1626, in which she noted ‘the great love and affection that my dearest lord, now with God… designed certain books unto the new library of your House…’.[6] Elizabeth outlived her husband by over thirty years, and as late as 1647 Charles I, after his escape from Hampton Court, took refuge with her at Titchfield, ‘well knowing her to be a Lady of that Honour, and Spirit, that she was superior to all kind of temptation’.[7]

Our portrait is known to have been purchased from Halsway Manor, Somerset, and it is likely that it came from the collection of William Mitchell who owned the house between 1924 and 1938. According to the Victoria County History of Somerset, Vol: V (1985), Mitchell appears to have been someone who enjoyed doing up houses, and acquired architectural furnishings for the house from several different sources. This would suggest that he also acquired objects with which to furnish the house, including the present portrait. The descent of the house does not suggest that it was acquired by any family with a familial connection to Elizabeth Vernon.

ARTIST'S BIOGRAPHY

Paul van Somer (also known as Paulus), came to England from Antwerp during the reign of James I of England, becoming one of the leading painters of the royal court. As well as painting the king and queen, his patrons included powerful members of the royal circle, such as Ludovic Stuart, 2^nd Duke of Lennox, Elizabeth Stanley, Countess of Huntingdon, Lady Elizabeth Grey, Countess of Kent, and Lady Anne Clifford, who referred in her diary to sitting to Van Somer on 30 August 1619.

Suprisingly little is known of Van Somer’s Flemish training, especially as he arrived in England as a mature artist. According to Karel van Mander, he was the brother of the artist Barend van Someren, and from 1612 – 1614 he lived in Leiden, and is then recorded in Brussels in 1616, the year he moved to London, where he immediately became court painter. He brought with him a new grandeur and naturalism to British royal portraiture. His much-reproduced portrait of James I in 1616 and of Queen Anne in hunting attire with her dogs, in the grounds of Oatlands palace in 1617, very much established Van Somer’s position as their firm favourite, arguably supplanting John de Critz and Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger. Copies of van Somer's royal portraits were often commissioned to be sent as gifts overseas, particularly as James disliked sitting for portraits.

In many ways, Van Somer could be said to have paved the way for fellow Flemish artists Daniel Mytens and Anthony Van Dyck at the British court, much as de Critz and Gheeraerts had made way for Van Somer. Indeed, Mytens settled in London by 1618, where he was Van Somer’s close neighbour in St. Martin’s Lane, Covent Garden. Van Somer is also believed to have been the first to consistently use regalia in royal portraiture, for example the Order of the Garter. Certainly, his work was much sought after for his faithful interpretations of his sitter’s finery.