Oil on canvas in a reproduction frame of appropriate type.
This portrait very sensitive to character, beautifully drawn and meticulously painted.
The sitter is LUCY HOLLIER (nee Knowles). Hollier, a widower of 29, married Edward Molins''s niece Lucy Knowles, who was not quite 16. She was the eldest daughter of Thomas Knowles, linen draper, and his wife Lucy, the eldest daughter of James Molins - in whose will his grandchild Lucy was left £50. Thomas Hollier and Lucy produced four sons and five daughters; six of these children were married before Lucy''s death on I5th August I677.
Lucy is shown wearing very expensive black clothes, fine lace, and a gold bracelet. She holds a book to demonstrate that she can read at a time when many were illiterate.
THOMAS HOLLIER was born in Coventry in 1609, and from 1629 trained in London as a surgeon. He worked at both Barts and St Thomas’s Hospitals, the latter for 53 years.
He is famous for operating on Samuel Pepys for the remo
...val of a large bladder stone in 1658. This was in the days when such surgery without anaesthetics or antiseptics often led to death. In 1662, Thomas did 30 consecutive stone operations without losing a single patient. He became a close friend of Samuel Pepys and Robert Boyle.
CORNELIUS JOHNSON (Jonson, Jansen, Van Ceulen) 1593-1661 was born in London, the son of Flemish emigres.
Although Waterhouse thought he was trained in Holland it seems more likely (as Collins Baker has it) that Marcus Gheeraerts was his master in London.
Johnson is the most satisfying and ''English'' of the portraitists working in England at time. He has a fine technique with a restrained and introspective style, with careful attention to the costume details.
His accurate portraits are never flattering but a sober and objective portrayal of his usual sitters: the rich merchant class, the gentry and lesser nobility. His style, and that of his Circle is easily identified by its coolness and restraint.
SIZE: 36.25 x 31 inches framed.
PROVENANCE: By family descent. (A card with much more information accompanies the painting) The final image shows the portrait hanging (upper right) in the Abbots Room, Flaxley Hall. (Messel Family Archives)
Internal Reference: 9275
Antique ID Number (AIDN): SA898844
Dateline of this antique is 17th Century
Height is 92cm (36.2inches)Width is 79cm (31.1inches)Depth is 5cm (2.0inches)
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