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Early Stuart Chester as a centre for regional portraiture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2013

ROBERT TITTLER
ROBERT TITTLER*
Affiliation:
Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus, Department of History, Concordia University, 7141 Sherbrooke St. W., Montreal, Qc, CanadaH4B1R6 Adjunct Professor of Art History, Department of Art History, Carleton University, 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottowa, On., CanadaK1S 5B6
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Abstract:

Scholarship on provincial towns and cities has thus far overlooked their role as centres of painting in the early modern era, leaving the false impression that painting, and art itself, remained the preserve of London. Chester proves a vibrant centre for such activities in the era 1590–1640. This article shows how and why the distinctive characteristics of Chester and its wider hinterland encouraged and shaped its production of portraiture. It also places Chester in the wider context of painting activity in other such provincial centres.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 41 , Issue 1 , February 2014 , pp. 3 - 21
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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References

1 Borsay, P., The English Urban Renaissance: Culture and Society in the Provincial Town, 1660–1770 (Oxford, 1989)Google Scholar.

2 Urban History, special issue: Music and Urban History, ed. Vanessa Harding, 29, 1 (2002), with essays relating to the early modern English experience by Emily Cockayne, Fiona Kisby, Caroline Barron and Peter Borsay. Kisby's contribution offers a bibliographic survey: ‘Music in European cities and towns to c. 1650: a bibliographic survey’, ibid., 74–82.

3 Tittler, R., The Face of the City: Civic Portraits and Civic Identity in Early Modern England (Manchester, 2007)Google Scholar, especially chs. 1–3; and Tittler, R., Portraits, Painters and Publics in Provincial England, 1540–1640 (Oxford, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ch. 4.

4 V. Tillyard, ‘Civic portraits painted for, or donated to, the council chamber of Norwich Guildhall before 1687’, unpublished Courtauld Institute MA thesis, 1978; M. Carrick, ‘Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century wall paintings in the county of Essex’, unpublished University of Essex M.Phil. thesis, 1990.

5 Tillyard, V., ‘Painters in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Norwich’, Norfolk Archaeology, 37 (1980), 315–19Google Scholar; Edmond, M., ‘Bury St Edmunds, a seventeenth-century art centre’, Walpole Society, 43 for 1987 (1989), 106–18Google Scholar; Morgan, V., ‘The Norwich Guildhall portraits: images in context’, in Moore, A. and Crawley, C. (eds.), Family and Friends: A Regional Survey of British Portraiture (London, 1992), 21–30Google Scholar; Morgan, V., ‘The Dutch and Flemish presence and the emergence of an Anglo-Dutch provincial artistic tradition in Norwich, c. 1500–1700’, in Roding, J., Slutter, E.J., Westerweel, B., van der Meiji-Tolmsa, M. and Nieuwenhuis, E.D. (eds.), Dutch and Flemish Artists in Britain, 1500–1800 (Leiden, 2002), 57–72Google Scholar.

6 A special issue of Urban History published in August 1995, for example, failed to address the issue prior to the late eighteenth century: Urban History, special issue, Art and the City, ed. S. Nenadic, 22, 2 (1995).

7 See, for example, the denial of such local activity in the widely circulated survey by Gaunt, William, A Concise History of English Painting (New York, 1964), 15Google Scholar. Such major recent exhibits as ‘Dynasties’ (Tate Britain, 1995–96) or ‘Holbein in England’ (Tate Britain, 2006–07) perpetuate this traditional focus.

8 The main sources for this study are ‘The Minute Book of the Company of Painter-Stainers, Embroiderers, Glaziers and Stationers, 1575–1621’, Cheshire and Chester Record Office (CCRO) MS ZG 17/1; ‘The Minute Book of the Company of Painter-Stainers, Embroiderers, Glaziers and Stationers, 1621 ff.’, CCRO MS ZG 17/2; and ‘The Rough Minute Book of the Company of Painter-Stainers, Embroiderers, Glaziers and Stationers’, CCRO MS ZCR 63/2/131. All unfortunately remain unpaginated, though references may usually be made to the entry date of particular items.

9 Summarized in Tittler, Portraits, Painters and Publics, chs. 2–3.

10 Lewis, C.P. and Thacker, A.T. (eds.), A History of the County of Chester, vol. V, part 1: The City of Chester: General History and Topography (Victoria History of the Counties of England, London, 2003), 90–5Google Scholar.

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12 A series of portraits of the barons of the exchequer of the Palatinate of Chester existed even in the earl of Leicester's time as chamberlain of the Palatinate (1563–88), which was early for civic portraiture of local or regional officials. Surviving paintings of local Chester officials and benefactors, all anonymously done, including those of John Vernon (1616), Sir Thomas White (1623), William Offley (early seventeenth century), survive and may be seen in the Town Hall; that of Mayor Thomas Aldersey (1615) was acquired by, and is displayed in, Chester's Grosvenor Museum late in 2011. CCRO MS Ml/6/166; Tittler, The Face of the City, 55–7.

13 Tittler, Portraits, Painters and Publics, chs. 2–3.

14 For example Croft-Murray, E., Decorative Painting in England, 1537–1837 (London, 1962), 68Google Scholar; Wells-Cole, A., Art and Decoration in Elizabethan and Jacobean England: The Influence of Continental Prints, 1558–1625 (London and New Haven, 1997)Google Scholar, passim.

15 Tittler, Portraits, Painters and Publics, ch. 6.

16 Phillips, A.D.M. and Phillips, C.B., A New Historical Atlas of Cheshire (Chester, 2002), 28–31Google Scholar.

17 Harris, B.E. (ed.), Victoria History of the County of Chester (Oxford, 1979), vol. II, 38Google Scholar.

18 As methodically recorded in the Company Minute Books, CCRO MSS ZG 17/1 and 17/2, passim.

19 British Library (BL) Harleian (Harl.) MS 2054, fols. 91r, 87v–89v, 156v.

20 CCRO MSS ZG 17/1 and 17/2, passim.

21 See, for example, CCRO MS ZG 17/1, entry for May 1591, in which a fund is established to help poor widows, and CCRO MS ZG 17/2, entry for 20 Jul. 1625, in which the legacy of the painter Thomas Hallewood to the Company is expended on relief of poor members.

22 Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB), vide Holme, Randle.

23 CCRO MS ZG 17/2, vide entry for 1613 et passim.

24 In April and May 1643, they met at the house of Randle Holme the elder as the Inn had been taken over as part of the fortification of the City against the impending siege. In 1646, they moved to the younger Holme's house on Watergate Street. CCRO MS ZCR 63/2/131, fols. 21v, 53–4, 66r.

25 CCRO MSS ZG 17/1 and 17/2, passim.

26 For example widows of Edward Dewsbury, Nicholas Hallewood, William Handcock, Robert Leech, Thomas Pulford, John Thorpe and William Welch (or Welsh) took over their deceased mates’ freeman's status and businesses in their era. Their first names remain unrecorded. CCRO MS ZG 17/1 and 17/2, passim.

27 Thus, for example, the Widow Dewsbury took over her deceased husband's shop c. 1612 and hired Thomas Leigh I for one year in 1615; CCRO MS ZG 17/1, journeymen's list for 1615.

28 For example, five Hallewoods are recorded as master painters between 1588 and the 1650s, with the widow of Nicholas keeping the shop going in the early 1630s until her son Christopher could take it over. CCRO MS ZG 17/2, passim.

29 CCRO MS 63/2/131, see entry for 7 Oct. 1621, et passim.

30 See, for example, Ralph, E. (ed.), Calendar of Bristol Apprenticeship Books (Bristol Record Society, 43, 1992), 54, 11, 126Google Scholar; and Ben-Amos, I.K., ‘Women apprentices in the trades and crafts of Bristol’, Continuity and Change, 6 (1991), 238–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 See Rappaport, S., Worlds Within Worlds: Structures of Life in Sixteenth-Century London (Cambridge, 1989), 311–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ben-Amos, I.K., ‘Failure to become freemen: urban apprentices in early modern England’, Social History, 16 (1991), 41–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and idem, Adolescence and Youth in Early Modern England (London and New Haven, 1994), 130–1; Griffiths, P., Youth and Authority, Formative Experiences in England, 1560–1640 (Oxford, 1996), 330–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and especially 330 and n. 172; Wrightson, K., Earthly Necessities: Economic Lives in Early Modern Britain (London and New Haven, 2000), 59Google Scholar.

32 Roberts, S. and Tittler, R., ‘Tracking the elusive portrait painter Thomas Leigh through Caroline England and Wales’, British Art Journal, 11 (2010), 1–9Google Scholar.

33 CCRO MSS ZG 17/1 and 17/2, passim.

34 ODNB, vide Holme, Randle.

35 ODNB, vide Holme, Randle.

36 ODNB, vide Holme, Randle.

37 Friar, S., The Sutton Companion to Heraldry (Stroud, 1992), 8–10Google Scholar; Squibb, G.D., ‘Deputy heralds of Chester’, Journal of the Chester Archaeological and Historic [sic] Society, 56 (1969), 24–8Google Scholar.

38 In addition to the portraits of mayors and benefactors noted in n. 12 above, portraits of the barons of the exchequer of the Palatinate of Chester had been done prior to 1600 and displayed in Chester Castle. In 1624, acting as chamberlain of the Palatinate, the earl of Derby admonished Randle Holme the elder for neglecting and misplacing them. Derby to Holme, 16 Sep. 1624, CCRO MS ML/6/166.

39 CCRO MS ZG 17/1, see his admission as an apprentice to Holme, 1601; see also, for example, BL Harl. MS 1091; Add. MS 26,704; 35213, fols. 33–37v; 47, 185; and 56,279, fol. 17v.

40 ODNB, vide Holme, Randle; BL MS 2135, fols. 13r, 23r, 94r, 130v; CCRO MS ZG 17/2 passim; Ormerod, G., The History of the County Palatine and City of Chester, 2nd edn, 3 vols. (London, 1882ff)Google Scholar, vol. II, 454–5.

41 BL Harl. MS 1920–2177, 5955, 7568–9.

42 One of 33 coats of arms he made on a single five metre long parchment scroll for John Edwards of Englefield in Denbighshire, recently sold at Maggs Bros. Ltd, is depicted in the British Art Journal, 10 (2009), opposite inside cover.

43 Tittler, Portraits, Painters, and Publics, 8–12, 118–24, 163–75.

44 BL Harl. MS 2001; Tittler, R. and Thackray, A., ‘Print collecting in provincial England prior to 1650: the Randle Holme Album’, British Art Journal, 9 (2008), 3–10Google Scholar.

45 Tittler and Thackray, ‘Print collecting’, 5–8.

46 BL Harl. MS 2001, fol. 8r.

47 BL Harl. MS 2001, fols. 4r, 15r, 85v–86r.

48 ODNB, vide Souch, John; Treuherz, J., ‘New light on John Souch of Chester’, Burlington Magazine, 139 (1997) 299–307Google Scholar.

49 Amongst the myriad of such Holme-signed certificates were those of Sir Thomas Aston, his first wife Elizabeth, Sir Peter Leigh and the father of Col. Thomas Leigh, all of them portrayed by Souch; Rylands, J.P. (ed.), Cheshire and Lancashire Funeral Certificates, A.D. 1600 to 1678 (Record Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, 6, 1882), 7–9, 123–9Google Scholar.

50 Ibid., 7–9.

51 The painting has now vanished, but a photograph of it may be found in the Heinz Archive of the National Portrait Gallery, sitters’ files, vide ‘Edwards of Rhual’ and painters’ files, ‘British, 1600–1650’, vide Bellin.

52 Rylands (ed.), Funeral Certificates, 5; CCRO MS ZG 17/2, see freeman admissions for 1633/34, et passim; Stewart, B. and Cutten, M. (eds.), Dictionary of Portrait Painters in Britain up to 1920 (Woodbridge, 1997), 95Google Scholar.

53 Roberts and Tittler, ‘Tracking the elusive portrait painter’, 1–9.

54 ODNB, vide King, Daniel.

55 Stewart, and Cutten, (eds.), Dictionary, 432Google Scholar.

56 Rev. Blomefield, Canon, ‘Puritanism in Chester in 1637, an account of the reception of William Prynne by certain inhabitants of the City of Chester’, Journal of the Architectural, Archaeological and Historic Society of Chester, 3 (1885), 271–88Google Scholar.

57 Ibid.

58 This and the following paragraph are based on the following: Singh, Prince F. Duleep, Portraits in Norfolk Houses, ed. Ferrar, E., 2 vols. (Norwich, 1928)Google Scholar; Tillyard, ‘Civic portraits painted for, or donated to, the council chamber of Norwich Guildhall’, passim; Tillyard, ‘Painters in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Norwich’, 315–19; Morgan, ‘The Dutch and Flemish presence’; Morgan, ‘The Norwich Guildhall portraits’.

59 Kirby, J., ‘The painters’ trade in the seventeenth century: theory and practice’, National Gallery Technical Bulletin, 20 (1999), 17–19Google Scholar; Ian Tyers, ‘On panel making and the later Holbein panels’, talk delivered at the National Portrait Gallery Workshop, ‘After Holbein and beyond’, 5 Dec. 2008; Zins, H., England and the Baltic in the Elizabethan Era (Manchester, 1972), 239–46Google Scholar.

60 Frith, B., Twelve Portraits of Gloucester (Gloucester, 1972)Google Scholar. An on-site inspection of these works by Dr Tarnya Cooper, chief curator of the National Portrait Gallery, and myself on 7 May 2009 has confirmed these impressions.

61 I am grateful to Nigel Cox of the Gloucester Folk Museum for pointing out that ochres have long been, and still are, mined in the county.