I have here a portrait of Edward Clinton, 1st Earl of Lincoln wearing an Order of the Garter collar. His dates are given as 1512-85, meaning this painting was probably painted in the 1570s or sometime around then. But what school of portraiture is this? I have looked at many, many Elizabethan-era portraits and I have not seen one which was done in this kind of style. Does anyone know?
It seems somewhat similar to this one. That may be because they’re both painted on wood. Otherwise, it might be a French style.
It’s quite flat looking, so really it might not be a stylistic thing so much as a level of quality. The artist hasn’t spent as much time shading the picture.
For some reason it almost reminds me of Rousseau.
I can’t give you an authoritative answer, but I can bump your thread for you. :^)
My first thought was that it looked influenced by pre-Renaissance egg tempera painting. There’s little attempt at realistic perspective or spatial depth through shading.
The name that popped into my head was Hans Holbein. A wiki search came up with this painting, which I’d say is very similar.
The Wikipedia article on Hans Holbein the Younger, describes his as a “one-off” who did not found a style school.
Oh, I know all about Holbein; actually, I’ve been a huge fan of his paintings ever since I was 15! I’ve seen a lot of his work, and all of his portraits of the Henrician period; I’ve never seen anything that approached the distinctly flat and simplistic (but in a classy way) style of Edward Clinton’s portrait. There’s just something about it; the way there is virtually no attempt to blend colors or shade; there’s very little detail (his hat is just a mass of black; his coat, except for the fur trim, is also completely monotone. And yet the colors stand out boldly; the vivid gold of his jeweled collar and the bright, healthy pink of his skin contrast perfectly with the black clothes and the burgundy backdrop. It’s a really beautiful painting and as I said, I find it Rousseau-like and several centuries ahead of its time.
I would really, really like to know more about this. And THANK you for bumping it!
This article on Thomas Clinton assigns the portrait to the “British School, probably after Cornelis Ketel.”
The Tate uses British (?) School as a catchall for anonymous artists who were–probably–British. (Although artists did a lot of traveling in those days.)
I can see why you like the picture. So many portraits try to impress you with the wealth & station of the subject. But others emphasize character & personality. Hey, this was a real guy!
Although, as it happens, Lincoln had as a young man been drawn by Holbein.
For the sake of completeness, this is the NMM catalogue entry on the later portrait.
http://www.nmm.ac.uk/collections/explore/object.cfm?ID=BHC2841
Like Sage Rat I think that anything unique about the painting might be more a quality or money issue than a stylistic one.
My estimate is that the artist spent 3/4s of his time working on showing every detail of the ceremonial collar. Nothing else, including the face, approaches that level of care. The pose, eye treatment, facial modeling, overall flatness and lack of separation between foreground and background are virtually identical to the Holbein I linked to.
The lack of detail in the clothes is very common is Dutch/Flemish renaissance portraiture, and maybe elsewhere too. Time is money, and also clothing detail would distract from the collar.
Sorry if this sounds like rain on your parade, but I’m not seeing anything exceptional about the picture… and no resemblance to Rousseau. Could you link to a Rousseau that it reminds you of?
The portrait looks very fresh and bright to me–perhaps the lack of a dark patina/possible lack of touch-ups makes it look modern and different from other portraits of the period? Darkening can sometimes give paintings a “depth” the original not over-finished flat look didn’t have. The first link from Baal also looks bright in this way.
Or, given the limits of internet reproductions, this could be completely wrong.
Interesting. The Holbein pencil sketch also had the same “eyes in a straight line” pose as the paintings of Clinton and Henry VIII.
Based on your link, it sounds like Clinton had enough money that the lack of detail was probably a deliberate choice of the artist, but who knows? Rich people can definitely be money conscious, and maybe his money was tied up the Drake expedition.
Another interesting thing about the painting is that the point of view is at the level of the golden collar. Typically portraits have a “camera height” around the subjects eyes or their chin, and pointing down to show some of the torso.
The perspective in the Clinton painting is finessed rather than scientific, but the camera seems placed right around collarbone level. (Or maybe because there’s no real perspective, the POV defaults to the middle of the frame. The face, hat. and gold collar are all sort of portrayed dead-on straight.)
Anyway… just rambling away. Thanks for the research.