Nicholas HILLIARD
kimberley valentine
Has anyone come across Nicholas HILLIARD, goldsmith & portrait artist to
Elizabeth I? I am looking for information on his descendants.
Your assistance is greatfully accepted.
Sincerely,
Kim from Canada
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Simon Pugh
<kaval...@hotmail.com> writes
miniaturist.
He was born c 1547 in Exeter, the son of a goldsmith and died 1619. He
had a son called Lawrence who was also a painter.
I would check out Hilliard researchers at Rootsweb/ other genealogy
sites, someone is bound to have done some work on this.
--
Simon Pugh
MICHAEL. CHAPPELL
I will reply off line tomorrow with a jpg for you.
There is also a small nag at the back of my mind re a descendant that I need
to discover, as fact, or if it is adopted name as in a business!!
Best wishes.
Yours,
Mikey.
Renia Simmonds
>From "A Dictionary of Art & Artists", Penguin, 1972
HILLIARD ( Hillyarde), Nicholas (c. 1547-1619) is the first great British
artist about whom we know a few details. He was the son of a goldsmith and
was himself trained in, and practised, that art although he was painting
miniature portraits by 1560. He may have been in Geneva (aged 10) in 1557,
as one of a family of Protestant refugees, at about the same time as a
goldsmith from Rouen called Oliver. he is recorded in the Godlsmiths Company
in 1570 and in the same year he painted his first dated portrait of Queen
Elizabeth, to whom he had probablyalready been appointed Limner and
Goldsmith: in the latter capacity he designed a Great Seal for her. He was
certainly in France between 1576 and 1578 and was probably the Nicholas
Belliart who was attached to the Duc d'Alencon, the Queen's suitor. about
1600 he compoded a treatise "The Arte of Limning" (first published in 1912),
in the course of which he records conversations with the Queen and,
inparticular, their agreement that portrait-painting should be done without
shadows: '...best in plaine lines without shadowing, for the lyne without
shadowe showeth all to a good judgment, but the shadowe without lyne showeth
nothing'. About this time he was in financial difficulties, perhaps partly
caused by his old-fashioned insistence on line without modelling, for his
pupil Isaac Oliver was by now a serrious rival to him. In 1617 he was
actually imprisoned, although it seems to have been as a surety for someone
else. His miniatures are always intended to be thought of as jewels, to be
held in the hand and inthis his goldsmith's training was no doubt decisive.
There are no known oil paintings which can be attributed to him with any
conficence, but a small group of portraits whos his style: the so-called
'Pelican' portait of Queen Elizabeth (Liverpool) and the 'Ermine' portrait
at Hatfield House are the best-known. There are works by him in the Royall
Coll., and in London (V & A) and in Cambridge (Fitzwm), Cleveland, London
(NPG, Nat. Martit. Mus.), New York (Met. Mus.), and Oxford (Bodleian
Library). His son, Laurence Hilliard (1582-after 1640), was also a limner.
Renia