Samuel Cooper 1608-1672

with receding light brown hair and a small moustache, wearing a white lawn collar and full armour, dark background, on vellum, oval, gold frame chased with dog tooth and laurel leaf bands, the silver-gilt reverse engraved with monogram O P  (Fig. 1)

The Viscounts Harcourt;
by descent to the present owner

London, Museum of London, from 1937-2006

Karl Pearson & Geoffrey M. Morant, The Portraiture of Oliver Cromwell, with special reference to the Wilkinson Head, 1935, p. 83, pl. XLV;
David Piper, ‘The Contemporary Portraits of Oliver Cromwell’, in The Walpole Society, vol. XXXIV, 1954, p. 39;
David Piper, Catalogue of Seventeenth-Century Portraits in the National Portrait Gallery 1625-1714, 1963, p. 93;
Daphne Foskett, Samuel Cooper, 1974, p. 115 (erroneously duplicating the entry for one miniature)

Overall the work is in good condition. The colours are fresh, strong and clear. There are some small areas of re-touching to the right cheack and left eye of the sitter. There is a further re-touched area located in the background to the right of the composition. Overall the work has been well preserved.
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The Harcourt portrait of Oliver Cromwell by Samuel Cooper, a depiction of one of the most significant figures in the history of Great Britain by one of its finest miniaturists, is a work of art of great importance.

Samuel Cooper, called ‘Prince of Limners’ by John Aubrey, established himself as an independent artist in the early 1640s, having first studied under, and later worked in association with, his master and uncle, John Hoskins. Miniatures by Cooper painted during this decade show the hand of a fully-fledged master who succeeded in fusing the innovations in portraiture introduced to England by van Dyck with the traditional style of miniature painting that had been the basis of his early training. Such of Cooper’s sitters as have been identified from this period suggest patronage of the landed and ruling classes, but not, apparently, members of the royal family. This factor, apart from Cooper’s reputation as the pre-eminent miniaturist of the day, may have encouraged Oliver Cromwell to turn to him for the supply of official miniature portraits.

The connection between the artist and the politician had been made by 1649, as attested by a signed and dated miniature of that year, depicting a pensive armour-clad Cromwell against a sky background (National Portrait Gallery, London, NPG 5589). That commissions continued to arrive from this source is confirmed by a letter written by Miles Woodshawe, dated 7 November 1650, informing Lord Conway, ‘I spoke to Mr Cooper, the painter, who desires you excuse him one month longer, as he has some work to finish for Lord General Cromwell and his family’.

Following the dissolution of the ‘Rump Parliament’ and the subsequent proclamation of Cromwell as Lord Protector in December 1653, the increased need for official state portraits became apparent. In this context Samuel Cooper played a crucial role in the delineation of the Protector’s image and, through repetition, its more general dissemination. Cooper’s uncompromisingly direct portrait of an individual wearing simple armour provided a visual metaphor for the new regime, just as earlier the ethereal elegance of fine silks and lace had been used as attributes of monarchy.

To facilitate the production of multiples when called for, Cooper adopted the practice of retaining a preparatory study for reference. The one he made of Cromwell has developed iconic renown, being considered, as John Cooper noted, ‘one of the most penetrating studies of a public figure ever produced’. This work, acquired by Richard Cromwell from Cooper’s widow, is now in the collection of the Duke of Buccleugh (Fig. 2). Given Cromwell’s recorded contact with Cooper it seems more probable that the famous anecdote associated with Peter Lely – later recorded, at least second or third-hand, by George Vertue- was more likely addressed to the miniaturist: ‘Mr Lilly I desire you woud (sic) use all your skill to paint my picture truly like me. & not Flatter me at all. but (pointing to his own face) remark all these ruffness. (sic) pimples warts & every thing as you see me. otherwise I never will pay a farthing for it’ (BM. Add. MSS 23,069, f.11; see George Vertue 'Note Books', vol. I, Walpole Society, vol. XVIII, 1930, p.91). That Cooper was the artist responsible for the official ad vivum portrait of Cromwell is given further credence by the fact that Lely’s representation of the Protector is clearly based on Cooper’s study. In one version of the Lely portrait, in the collection of the Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery (Fig 3), the artist has eschewed ‘ruffness’ and given the Protector a fuller head of hair, apparently contrary to instructions.

As diplomatic correspondence of the Commonwealth period confirms, Cooper’s portraits of the Protector were given to representatives of France, Sweden and the United Provinces. On another occasion Cromwell himself sent his miniature by Cooper to Queen Christina of Sweden, with accompanying verses by John Milton:

Bellipons Virgo, Septem regina trionum,
Christina, Arctoi lucida stella poli!

Present-day writers all remark that Cooper produced many official miniatures of Cromwell based upon the Buccleuch study. Although this was almost certainly the case, it seems that only two of them appear to have survived: the present Harcourt portrait and another, signed with initials and dated 1656, in the National Portrait Gallery, London (NPG 3065). The differences between these two miniatures are marked. The latter, smaller in size (7 by 5.7cm), shows little of the psychological intensity of Buccleuch study and its brushwork lacks precision. As such it has been used as an example of the negative consequences of repetition. By contrast, the present work not only replicates the scale of the study at a ratio of one to one, but also precisely charts, with a remarkable variety of brushstroke and a wide range of tone, the facial features recorded in the prototype. Further, as befits an official portrait, the armour, with rainbow reflections and gilded highlights on the studs, has been completed and the background filled in. This is how Cooper intended Cromwell to be seen.

It was a version of this miniature, possibly even the present example, which was copied by the Swedish artist Christian Richter at the beginning of the 18^th century. Examples of Richter’s worthy but dry replicas have entered many important collections including the British Royal Collection (Walker, no. 15), the Devonshire collection (dated 1708), and the Wallace collection (Reynolds, no. 42, dated 1708). The last version is inscribed on the reverse ‘Sum possessor’, suggesting that Richter owned the original portrait from which it was derived. The combined impact of these copies by Richter has inevitably had a distorting effect upon our perception of the official portraits of Cromwell painted by Cooper himself. The Harcourt portrait, an intense and penetrating depiction of a man both as a public figure and private individual, realigns this view and fully justifies the inscription on Cooper’s tomb in St Pancras Old Church, that he was the Apelles of England, the glory of his age and of his art – ‘Angliae Apelles, Saeculi sui et Artis/ Decus in quâ excolendâ  sicut neminem/ quem sequertur invent…’