In Farrer’s Portraits in Suffolk Houses (1908), where our painting is featured, portraits depicting members of the Somerset, North, and Warner families - all of whom had once owned Badmondisfield Hall - are also recorded. The sitter in the present portrait is recorded as an unknown man in amongst the most featured family, the Warners, whose patriarch, Francis Warner (d.1667), had bought the manor from Sir Henry North, 2nd Bt. (c.1635 - 1695) in 1660. The oldest painting within the family collection in 1908 depicted Sir Thomas Andrewes (d.1659), who was a Lord Mayor of London and Francis Warner’s father-in-law. Whilst it is impossible to assign our sitter’s identity to a member of the Andrewes family, it seems more likely, than not, that the sitter could be aligned with that line of the Warner ancestry.[1]

Although it is now unclear who painted this portrait, it shares many qualities that are attributes of several London-based portraitists during the first half of the seventeenth century. One of the most prominent features of the present portrait is the painted cartouche, which features heavily in bust-length portraits by William Larkin and Cornelius Johnson, especially during the 1610s.[2] It was also a device used by the miniaturist John Hoskins when he worked on a larger scale in oils; a good example of which, that happens to have the same measurements as our panel, is the portrait of Sir Hamon Le Strange of Hunstanton (1583 – 1654) [Fig. 2].

John Hoskins I was probably born in Wells, Somerset, however the subsequent circumstances and main events of his life are still largely obscure. He is regarded as being the finest miniaturist in England between the death of Nicholas Hilliard, in 1619, and the mature-fame of his own nephew, Samuel Cooper (c.1608 - 1672).[3]

Indirect evidence suggests that Hoskins and his family lived in Blackfriars, a district outside the jurisdiction of the Painter–Stainers' Company, a much favoured area by immigrant artists, including Anthony van Dyck. From at least 1634, however, Hoskins lived and worked as a miniaturist in Bedford Street, Covent Garden, and was granted by the king on 30 April 1640 an annuity of £200 for life, 'provided that he work not for any other without his Majesty's licence'. After the first instalment, in the changed political and economic circumstances of the 1640s, the annuity was not paid. Hoskins made his will on 30 December 1662. He died on 22 February 1665, said to be sick and impoverished, and was buried the same day at St Pauls in Covent Garden.

It seems likely that Hoskins would have been influenced by his near-exact contemporary William Larkin (c.1585 – 1619), whose formulae for the arrangement and representation of his sitters, as well as handling of the paint and panel-size, Hoskins at this time evidently followed. It seems that around the date of our portrait, i.e. circa 1615, that Hoskins started to focus on the miniature scale as the earliest exponents of this medium date to this period. Interestingly there is nearly no correlation between his technique or style in oils with that of his miniatures, which, particularly later on, is overtly affected by the styles of the masters he was copying in little.

During the late 1630s, when he was in demand for both his original miniatures and copies after larger portraits by the like of Sir Anthony van Dyck, Hoskins seems to have employed his nephews, Samuel and Alexander Cooper, and David des Granges, who married a Judith Hoskins in January 1636, to help meet demand. Demand naturally encouraged an increase in supply, and from the 1640s miniatures bearing Hoskins's monograms were rarely painted in the immensely demanding technique, and never on the scale, of the great works of the previous decade. A pensioned servant of the crown, after 1642 Hoskins may willingly have passed the leading role to his nephew Samuel Cooper, who was by this time established in his own house and signing his own work.

This portrait once hung at Badmondisfield Hall in Suffolk, which was formerly owned (respectively) by the Somerset, North and Warner families. Badmondisfield would then remain in this family until the death of Nathaniel Barrett Warner Bromley in 1936.

[1] Most of the Norths’ heirlooms were dispersed to extended family after the demise of Sir Henry 2nd Bt., who died unmarried. Much was left with his estate at Mildenhall in Suffolk to his nephew, Sir Thomas Hamner, but the bulk of the family collection was kept at his cousin’s seat, Wroxton Abbey.

[2] The costume worn by our sitter, in particular the layered lace ruff and cloak, dates the work to the second decade of the 1600s.

[3] Hoskins’s sister Barbara married a Richard Cooper, who were the parents of Samuel and Alexander Cooper. Their parents died prematurely and they were raised, and trained, by their uncle.