Lot 48: Circle of Robert Peake (c.1551-1619 London)

Circle of Robert Peake (c.1551-1619 London)
Portrait of John, 2nd Baron Poulett (1615-65), half-length, wearing a white jacket with slashed puff sleeves and red ribbon belts
oil on canvas
28½ x 25 in. (72.4 x 63.5 cm.)

London, Tate Gallery, The Elizabethan Image, 28 November 1969-8 February 1970, no. 179a, as an 'unknown follower of Peake' (catalogue by R. Strong).

R. Strong, English Icon: Elizabethan & Jacobean Portraiture, London, 1969, p. 252, no. 233, as an 'unknown follower of Peake'.

The Rt. Hon. Earl Poulett, Hinton House, Somerset; Sotheby's, London, 5 March 1969, lot 1 (part), as 'Johnson' (£1150 to Betts).
with Leggatt Bros., London, from whom purchased by the present owner.

THE PROPERTY OF A PRIVATE COLLECTOR

The present work and the following two lots are rare survivors of a tradition of commissioned sets of family portraits that flourished in Elizabethan England. Executed by an anonymous, probably provincial artist they follow the fashionable style popularized several decades earlier by Robert Peake (c. 1551-1619). Depicting three brothers all dressed in matching costumes of cream-colored silk slashed doublets with scarlet trimming and long lace collars, stylistically they can be dated to circa 1630.

These portraits of three young members of the Poulett family of Hinton St. George, Somerset can be securely identified through their matriculation records at Oxford University. They reveal that the sitter in the present work, the Hon. John Poulett (1615-1665) and his brother, Francis (lot 51) both matriculated from Exeter College on 20 April 1632. Their younger brother, Amias (lot 52), was awarded an M.A. on 16 January 1643. As the sons of John Poulett (1585-1649), the portraits were likely commissioned to mark his elevation to the peerage in 1627 as Baron Poulett of Hinton St. George. At around this time, Lord Poulett undertook an extensive building program enlarging and improving Hinton House whose origins date back to 1490.

John, 1st Baron Poulett was the eldest son of Sir Anthony Poulett, who served as Governor of Jersey and as Captain of the Guard to Queen Elizabeth I. Lord Poulett served as M.P. for Somerset and Lyme Regis. In 1635 he commanded a ship under Admiral the Earl of Lindsey, by whom he was knighted. Staunch Royalists, Lord Poulett and his eldest sons, John and Francis, served with the King's army in the North. In 1640 Lord Poulett was impeached by the Parliament for resisting the Militia Ordinance. In 1643 he raised a force, which he led into Dorset, and besieged Lyme Regis. Being appointed Commissioner of Exeter, he was taken prisoner on the surrender of that city in 1646, and was brought to London, where he died on 20 March 1649. He married Elizabeth Kenn, daughter of Christopher Kenn. Their eldest son, John, the sitter in the present work married firstly, Catharine Vere, daughter of Horatio de Vere, 1st and last Baron Vere of Tilbury and Mary Tracy, in March 1640. He married, secondly, Anne Browne, daughter of Sir Thomas Browne, 2nd Bt. and Annie Palmer, circa 1660. He died on 15 September 1665.

The majority of the contents of Hinton House were sold by a descendant George, 8th Earl Poulett (d. 1973) in sales at Sotheby's, London in 1968-1669. The present work and the two following lots were offered together on 5 March 1969, as lot 1.