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Big price for Cromwell 'warts' mini portrait
Patrick Sawer, Evening Standard27 Apr 2007
Oliver Cromwell was a tough subject to paint.
When Sir Peter Lely was asked to create a portrait of him, he famously asked for a brutally honest image.
"Use all your skill to paint your picture truly like me and not flatter me at all, but remark all these roughness, pimples, warts and everything as you see me," he said.
Now Sotheby's is to sell a miniature of the Lord Protector painted by Samuel Cooper, perhaps the greatest British portrait artist of the 17th century.
The striking 4in x 31/2 in image of Cromwell, dressed in his battle armour and looking as he did when he led Parliament against King Charles I, is considered in some quarters to be the definitive "warts and all" representation.
It is to go under the hammer for an expected £150,000 in June, making it one of the highest prices yet for a miniature.
It was painted in 1657, a year before Cromwell died of malaria.
A number of copies were made but this one, owned by the Harcourt family and on loan to the Museum of London for 50 years, is one of only two that survives.
Reader views (1)
Now this might be something worth raising money for to preserve for the nation! How many of these original portraits do we have? I'm sure the NPG would be interested. Let's preserve something like this rather than the Blue Rigi ( I refused to give - we have acres of Turners!). I hope the National Art Collections Fund is listening: they only raise a small portion of the money any way.
- Carlyle Braden, Croydon, UK, 29/04/2007 09:45
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