Note 144 — IX—THE PATRONAGE OF THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON

Two portraits, representing the Earl in early manhood, are at Welbeck Abbey, and are described above. Of the remaining seven paintings, two are assigned to Van Somer, and represent the Earl in early middle age; one, a half-length, a very charming picture, now belongs to James Knowles, Esq., of Queen Anne’s Lodge; the other, a full-length in drab doublet and hose, is in the Shakespeare Memorial Gallery at Stratford-on-Avon. Mireveldt twice painted the Earl at a later period of his career; one of the pictures is now at Woburn Abbey, the property of the Duke of Bedford, the other is at the National Portrait Gallery. A fifth picture, assigned to Mytens, belongs to Viscount Powerscourt; a sixth, by an unknown artist, belongs to Mr. Wingfield Digby, and the seventh (in armour) is in the Master’s Lodge at St. John’s College, Cambridge, where Southampton was educated. The miniature by Isaac Oliver, which also represents Southampton in late life, was formerly in Dr. Lumsden Propert’s collection. It now belongs to a collector at Hamburg. The two miniatures assigned to Peter Oliver belong respectively to Mr. Jeffery Whitehead and Sir Francis Cook, Bart. (Cf. Catalogue of Exhibition of Portrait Miniatures at the Burlington Fine Arts Club, London, 1889, pp. 32, 71, 100.) In all the best preserved of these portraits the eyes are blue and the hair a dark shade of auburn. Among the middle-life portraits Southampton appears to best advantage in the one by Van Somer belonging to Mr. James Knowles.