Hilliard, Nicholas

born 1547, Exeter, Eng.

died Jan. 7, 1619, London

British painter.

The son of a goldsmith, he trained as a jeweler and began painting miniatures in his youth. In 1570 he was appointed miniature painter to Elizabeth I. He produced many portraits of her and of such members of her court as Francis Drake and Walter Raleigh. He retained his appointment on the accession of James I (1603), while also practicing as a goldsmith and jeweler. The first great native-born English painter of the Renaissance, he raised the art of miniature painting to its highest point of development and influenced English portraiture through the early 17th century.

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▪ English painter

born 1547, Exeter, Devon, Eng.

died Jan. 7, 1619, London

 the first great native-born English painter of the Renaissance. His lyrical portraits raised the art of painting miniature portraiture (limning in Elizabethan England) to its highest point of development and did much to formulate the concept of portraiture there during the late 16th and early 17th centuries.

      Hilliard's earliest known attempts at miniature painting were made in 1560. Hilliard became miniature painter to Queen Elizabeth I about 1570 and made many portraits of her and of the leading members of her court. He paid a short visit to France in the service of the Duc d'Alençon but returned early in 1578 because his wife was expecting a child.

      Throughout his life Hilliard practiced as goldsmith and jeweller as well as miniaturist, and in 1584 he designed Queen Elizabeth's second great seal. On the accession of James I, in 1603, his appointment as limner to the crown was continued, but he seems to have found the atmosphere of the new court less congenial to his art.

      In his Treatise on the Arte of Limning (c. 1600) he gives an account of his method and many sidelights on his own mercurial and engaging temperament. Throughout his life he had financial difficulties and was imprisoned for debt for a short period in 1617. In the book he also states that his art is derived from that of the painter Hans Holbein (Holbein, Hans, the Younger) the Younger, a German portraitist working in England, whose influence doubtless accounts for Hilliard's preference for even, nondramatic lighting and firm contours, as seen in the miniatures “An Unknown Youth Leaning Against a Tree Among Roses” and “An Unknown Man Against a Background of Flames” (both in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London).

      Nicholas Hilliard's son Laurence (c. 1582–1640) also practiced miniature painting, but a much more eminent pupil was Isaac Oliver (Oliver, Isaac) (q.v.).

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