Thomas Flatman, Portrait of a Woman, ca. 1660–65

Chicago:

Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, “Thomas Flatman, Portrait of a Woman, ca. 1660–65,” catalogue entry in Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, Blythe Sobol, and Maggie Keenan, The Starr Collection of Portrait Miniatures, 1500–1850: The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, vol. 2, ed. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024), https://doi.org/10.37764/8322.5.1214.

MLA:

Marcereau DeGalan, Aimee. “Thomas Flatman, Portrait of a Woman, ca. 1660–65,” catalogue entry. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, Blythe Sobol, and Maggie Keenan. The Starr Collection of Portrait Miniatures, 1500–1850: The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, edited by Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, vol. 2, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024. doi: 10.37764/8322.5.1214.

See the artist’s biography in volume 4.

This portrait was formerly believed to be a likeness of Elizabeth Claypole, née Cromwell (1629–1658).¹ Claypole was the second-born and reportedly favorite daughter of English statesman, politician, and soldier Oliver Cromwell, who called her “Betty.”² Because the earliest known portraits by Thomas Flatman date to around 1660, after Claypole’s early death in 1658, this was previously assumed to be a posthumous portrait.³ However, no verified portrait of Elizabeth Claypole is known to exist, despite many portraits that bear this identification. The most widely recognized depiction is a miniature by Samuel Cooper from 1653, held in the collection of The Duke of Buccleuch, which portrays a younger woman with a slimmer face and notably large brown eyes (Fig. 1). Although the present sitter does bear some physical resemblance to the figure in Cooper’s miniature, the sitter in the Nelson-Atkins portrait has distinctive blue eyes, thus making the attribution to Claypole untenable. Additionally, there were two other women in Cromwell’s life named “Elizabeth”: his mother, Elizabeth Cromwell, née Steward, and wife, Elizabeth Cromwell, née Bourchier. Examination of their likenesses reveals that they too had brown eyes, further supporting the conclusion that neither of them can be the present sitter.⁴

Continuing the examination of facial features, the present sitter’s heavy-lidded eyes, fleshy chin, alabaster skin, and cheeks heightened with a rosy red capture the hallmarks of beauty in the 1660s. This aesthetic coincided with Peter Lely’s (1618–1680) famous series of eleven portraits of women from the Restoration court, who would go on to be known as the Windsor Beauties and who look remarkably similar.⁵ The diarist Samuel Pepys famously remarked on Lely’s tendency to flatter his subjects, claiming that they were all “good, but not like,” a practice echoed in Flatman’s work, though to a lesser degree.⁶ Given the standardization of beauty in portrayals of women during this period and the lack of further documentation, the mystery of the present sitter’s identity may remain forever unsolved.

Stylistically, this miniature reflects Flatman’s early career and was most likely realized between 1660 and 1665. Although indebted to Cooper’s technique of red-brown hatching to structure the face, Flatman’s strokes remain distinct, contrasting with the smoother finishes seen in Cooper’s later works after 1660.⁷ Cooper frequently placed his sitters against a darkened column and bright blue sky, evoking a natural light source. In the present miniature, Flatman places the sitter before a darkened curtain, deviating from Cooper’s column motif, and a sky background darkened by gray clouds, heightening the drama of this portrait of an unknown beauty.

Notes

1. Claypole married John Claypole of Northborough Manor, near Peterborough, on January 13, 1646. They had four children, one of whom, Oliver, died in 1658, a month before his mother. See R. W. Ramsey, “Elizabeth Claypole,” English Historical Review 7, no. 25 (January 1892): 36.

2. Oliver Cromwell to Elizabeth Cromwell, Edinburgh, April 12, 1651, in W. C. Abbott and C. D. Crane, eds., The Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, 2:405, cited in Lisa Nunn, “‘An hundred times fitter for a Barn than a Palace’: A Gendered Analysis of the Protectoral Portraits of Elizabeth Cromwell and Her Daughter,” Cromwelliana 3, no. 10 (2021): 55, https://www.olivercromwell.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Cromwelliana 2021.pdf.

3. Some scholars speculate that Elizabeth Cromwell’s death broke her father’s heart and precipitated his death one month later. See the entry for a portrait of Elizabeth Claypole by the circle of Sir Peter Lely in “Key Collections,” Cromwell Museum, accessed April 17, 2024, https://www.cromwellmuseum.org/cromwell/key-collections/key-collection/art.

4. Lisa Nunn includes pictures of the Cromwell women in “An hundred times fitter for a Barn than a Palace” on pages 49, 52, and 56, respectively: Robert Walker (ca. 1599–1658), Elizabeth Cromwell, née Steward (1565–1654), Mother of the Lord Protector, ca. 1654, oil on canvas, 29 1/2 x 24 7/16 in. (75 x 62 cm), Museum of London; Robert Walker, Elizabeth Cromwell, née Bourchier (1598–1665), Her Highness the Protectoress, ca. 1657, oil on canvas, 48 13/16 x 39 3/8 in. (124 x 100 cm), Cromwell Museum, Huntingdon, England; and Circle of Sir Peter Lely, Elizabeth Claypole, née Cromwell (1629–1658), the Lord Protector’s Second Daughter, ca. 1653, oil on canvas, 26 x 18 7/8 in. (66 x 48 cm), Cromwell Museum.

5. Lely’s Windsor Beauties are said to be modeled on the features of famed court beauty Barbara Villiers, Duchess of Cleveland, with each portrait exhibiting a similar look. See Peter Lely, Barbara Villiers, Duchess of Cleveland, ca. 1663–65, oil on canvas, 49 x 39 15/16 in. (124.5 x 101.4 cm), Royal Collection Trust, https://col.rct.uk/sites/default/files/collection-online/2/3/674192-1491214454.jpg.

6. See entry for August 21, 1668, in Samuel Pepys, The Diary of Samuel Pepys (1668; repr., Project Gutenberg digital edition, 2004), https://ia601602.us.archive.org/18/items/diaryofsamuelpep04191gut/4191.txt. Another Windsor Beauty is seen in Studio of Peter Lely, Ann Digby, Countess of Sunderland, before 1666, oil on canvas, 49 3/16 x 40 1/16 in. (124.9 x 101.8 cm), Royal Collection Trust, https://www.rct.uk/collection/404515/anne-digby-countess-of-sunderland-ca-1646-1715, who bears some resemblance to the Nelson-Atkins sitter.

7. John Murdoch makes this point in Seventeenth-Century English Miniatures in the Collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum (London: H.M. Stationery Office in association with the Victoria and Albert Museum, 1997), 205.

Mr. John W. (1905–2000) and Mrs. Martha Jane (1906–2011) Starr, Kansas City, MO, by 1950–1958 [1];

Their gift to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1958.

Notes

[1] The Starrs lent the portrait to Four Centuries of Miniature Painting at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, January 19–March 19, 1950.

Four Centuries of Miniature Painting, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, January 19–March 19, 1950, unnumbered, as Elizabeth Claypole.

The Starr Foundation Collection of Miniatures, The Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, December 8, 1972–January 14, 1973, no cat., no. 12, as Elizabeth Claypole.

Samuel Cooper and his Contemporaries, National Portrait Gallery, London, March 15–June 16, 1974, no. 169, as A Lady called Elizabeth Claypole.

Four Centuries of Miniature Painting, exh. cat. (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1950), 3, as Elizabeth Claypole.

Ross E. Taggart, ed., Handbook of the Collections in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 4th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1959), 135, (repro.), as Elizabeth Claypoole [sic].

Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 12, p. 12, (repro.), as Elizabeth Claypole.

Ross E. Taggart and George L. McKenna, eds., Handbook of the Collections in The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Missouri, vol. 1, Art of the Occident, 5th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1973), 147, (repro.), as Elizabeth Claypoole [sic].

Daphne Foskett, Samuel Cooper and his Contemporaries, exh. cat. (London: National Portrait Gallery, 1974), 92, (repro.), as A Lady called Elizabeth Claypole.