Artware Fineart has dated this 17th Century Oil Portrait to the 17th Century.
Portrait of John Milton 1608 – 1674, poet, polemicist, man of letters, & civil servant
oil on canvas, relined
30 x 25in. (76 x 63.5cm.)
Anecdotes of Painting in England..., by Horace Walpole, 3rd edition,(volumes I,II and III) with the book plates of William Aston, with notes on the entry of John Hoskins stating that a Portrait of John Milton is in the possesion of William Aston of Hereford , 1782,plus two copies of the auction catalogue that the painting was purchased from, circa 1926 (lot 114), the original lot description describes the Sittr as 'Milton'.
Provenance
William Astonof Hereford circa 1780
16
Notes
John Milton, (1608–1674), poet and polemicist, was born at 6.30 a.m. on Friday 9 December 1608 in the house at the sign of the Spread Eagle, Bread Street, London, and baptized in nearby All Hallows Church on 20 December, the third child of John Milton (1562–1647), and his wife, Sara, née Jeffrey (c.1572–1637). The house in Bread Street accommodated the scrivener's business of Milton's father, and was also the family home. The most remarkable feature of the domestic life of Milton's childhood was music: Milton's father was a composer, and the music that he wrote was designed for performance in private houses, without an audience. Milton grew up in a household in which music was performed, and his skills as a singer in consorts and as a player of the organ and the bass viol were acquired as a child in Bread Street.
Education
Milton was initially educated at home by private tutors, including Thomas Young, a Scottish schoolmaster who eventually became master of Jesus College, Cambridge. In Ad patrem ('To my Father') Milton was later to express his gratitude that his father had paid for lessons in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, and Italian. It is likely that instruction in these languages began with private tutors; although Milton went on to study the ancient languages at school, modern languages were not taught in schools, and all of Milton's instruction in French and Italian (and possibly Spanish) was given by private tutors. At an unknown date between 1615 and 1621 Milton became a pupil at nearby St Paul's School; the most likely date is 1620, when the departure of Thomas Young for a pulpit in Hamburg may have prompted the decision to send Milton to school. At St Paul's, Milton was taught by Alexander Gil the elder and became a friend of Alexander Gil the younger and of Charles Diodati. A lifetime later, Milton's widow told John Aubrey that Milton was a poet at the age of ten. None of Milton's extant poems can be assigned to this date, but a few of his schoolboy juvenilia survive, including an imitation of Mantuan entitled Apologus de rustico et hero ('The Fable of a Peasant and his Master') and a Greek epigram, Philosophus ad regem quendam ('A philosopher to a certain king'). About 1874 a page (now in Austin, Texas) apparently in Milton'syouthful hand came to light, and it contains a prose theme on early rising and two Latin poems. Milton's earliest datable poems are English paraphrases of psalms 114 and 136; when Milton printed them in 1645 he said that they 'were done by the Author at fifteen years old', which was in 1624.
Early in 1625 Milton arrived in Cambridge, perhaps in time for the start of the Lent term on 13 January. On 12 February, on payment of 10s., he was admitted to Christ's College as a minor pensioner, a status below that of fellow-commoner but above that of sizar. The tutor to whom he was assigned was William Chappell, who was later to become provost of Trinity College, Dublin. On 9 April 1625 Milton presented himself to James Tabor, the university registrary, and formally matriculated at the university. Undergrad
Artware Fineart has dated this 17th Century Oil Portrait to the 17th Century.
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John Hoskins, Circa 1590-1665 Portrait of John Milton 1608 – 1674, Poet, Polemicist, Man of Letters, & Civil Servant
