WADDESDON.- Waddesdon Manor’s special display Power and Portraiture: painting at the court of Elizabeth I is centred on two portraits attributed to Nicholas Hilliard with unprecedented confidence. Hilliard is famous for his miniatures, painted in watercolour on vellum.

Archival documents suggest that he also made paintings ‘in greate’ – full-scale portraits in oil paint. Scholars have suggested various oil paintings that might have been painted by, or under the direction of Hilliard (including the ‘Pelican’ and ‘Phoenix’ portraits, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool and National Portrait Gallery, London, respectively) but these attributions rely heavily on stylistic comparison with his miniatures and it is hard to make conclusive comparisons between works of such different scale, type and medium. The Rothschild portraits also share many similarities of style and technique with Hilliard’s miniatures, particularly the treatment of the faces, lace and jewels. However, what makes the Rothschild portraits so exciting is that scientific analysis carried out at the Hamilton Kerr Institute shows that they are painted on panels constructed of French oak rather than Baltic oak the English painters usually used. The male sitter – Sir Amias Paulet – was Elizabeth I’s resident ambassador to France from 1576 to 1579 and for some of this time Hilliard (who was in France from 1576 to 1578) was a member of his retinue. The stylistic affinities with other works by the artist, together with the evidence that links these paintings with Hilliard’s time in France, allows scholars to attribute these splendid paintings to Hilliard with unprecedented confidence.

Power & Portraiture: Painting at the Court of Elizabeth I
Elizabeth I and her courtiers used portraits to fashion their public image and to promote themselves in a glamorous, dangerous world. in this display, paintings of Elizabeth are flanked by portraits of her charismatic suitor, the Earl of Leicester, her ambassador to France, Sir Amias Paulet, and the doomed Duke of Norfolk.

Works by Netherlandish painters demonstrate the role played by foreign artists in the self-fashioning of the English court while two panel paintings by the English painter Nicholas Hilliard were created during his travels abroad.

Hilliard is famous for his miniatures, and, although he is known to have painted large-scale oil paintings, none has been identified until now. this is the first chance to examine them alongside the ‘Phoenix’ portrait of Elizabeth I, which some scholars think may also be by Hilliard.

Waddesdon Manor was built by Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild between 1874 and 1885 to display his collection of arts and to entertain the fashionable world. Opened to the public in 1959, Waddesdon Manor is managed by the Rothschild Foundation, a family charitable trust, on behalf of the National Trust, who took over ownership in 1957. It’s home to the Rothschild Collections of paintings, sculpture and decorative arts.