Sir Edward Herbert, later 1st Baron Herbert of Cherbury (1581/2 – 1648)
William Larkin (London c.1585 – London 1619)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
circa 1610
Materials
Oil on copper (oval)
Measurements
559 x 457 mm (22 x 18 in)
Order this imageCollection
Charlecote Park, Warwickshire
NT 533855
Summary
Oil painting on copper in an oval giltwood frame. Sir Edward Herbert, later 1st Baron Herbert of Cherbury (1581/2 – 1648) by William Larkin (London c.1585 – London 1619), c.1610. An oval, head and shoulders portrait of Sir Edward Herbert. Positioned half left with a direct gaze with the spectator. He has dark hair and moustache and beard. He is wearing a dark green habit with stars embroidered in gold. Potentially created to be paired with Larkin’s miniature of Sir Thomas Lucy III (1585 – 1640, NT 533854). An altered portrait copy of this miniature is held at Powis Castle and Garden (NT 1180943). A rectangular version of this portrait at University College, Oxford and traces of inscription found when cleaning indicate that this portrait was originally rectangular.
Full description
Sir Edward Herbert was a philosopher, courtier, soldier, musician, poet and diplomat. Herbert may have commissioned Larkin to create both this and an accompanying portrait of Thomas Lucy III to commemorate when Herbert saved Thomas from drowning when their ship foundered on Dover pier in 1609. During this incident, Herbert refused to let any others onto their rescue boat before Thomas got in, writing in his memoirs that he said: “if any man offered to get in before him, I should resist him with my sword; whereupon, a faithful servant of his taking Sir Thomas Lucy out of the cabin, who was half-dead of sea-sickness, put him into my arms, whom after I had received, I bade the shallop make away for the shore”. Both portraits were previously ascribed to Isaac Oliver, who made another miniature of Herbert (NT 1183954), and were the first works to be attributed to William Larkin. According to Herbert’s biography there were at least three copies of this portrait made: for Lord Dorset before Herbert left for the Low Countries in 1610; for ‘a greater person’, often identified as Queen Anne of Denmark, and for Lady Dorothy Eyre (Lady Ayres), who Herbert claims had a copy made by Isaac Oliver and who “caused it to be set in gold and enamelled, and so wore it about her neck”. In 1611, Herbert was stabbed near Whitehall Palace by Dorothy’s husband, Sir John Eyre, who accused him of an affair with his wife. The locations of the latter two copies are not known. A distinct, altered copy of this miniature, dated around 1800, is held at Powis Castle and Garden (NT 1180943) and a rectangular version of this portrait is held at University College, Oxford.
Provenance
Presented to the National Trust by Sir Montgomerie Fairfax-Lucy (1896 – 1965), two years after the death of his father, Sir Henry Ramsay-Fairfax, 3rd Bt (1870 – 1944), with Charlecote Park and its chief contents, in 1946.
Makers and roles
William Larkin (London c.1585 – London 1619), artist
References
Lees-Milne 1952 James Lees-Milne, ‘Two Portraits at Charlecote Park by William Larkin’, Burlington Magazine, XCIV, 1952, pp.352-56 British Portraits: Winter Exhibition (exh cat) Royal Academy, London, 24 November 1956 - 3 March 1957, no.35 Strong 1969 Roy Strong, The English Icon, Elizabethan and Jacobean Portraiture, London, 1969, no.325 Chu 2018 John Chu, House of Portraits: Powis Castle, Swindon, 2018, p.36 Hearn 1995: Karen Hearn (ed.), Dynasties Painting in Tudor and Jacobean England, 1530-1630 (exh. cat.), Tate Gallery, London, 12 October 1995 - 7 January 1996, pp.196-197 MacLeod 2019: Catharine MacLeod (ed.), Elizabethan Treasures: Miniatures by Hilliard and Oliver, exh.cat., National Portrait Gallery, London 2019, pp.14, 16
