International studio (60.1916/1917)

The Buccleuch Miniatures

vitality of draughtsmanship, however small to scale,
rests with sympathy with form guiding the move-
ment of the hand, rather than observation of detail
dictating to the fingers. It is an actual process


LADY ARABELLA STUART (1575-1615)
BY ISAAC OLIVER
of “ modelling,” from sympathetic knowledge that
is going on, and it is in the heart of this process
that that inter-action between the consciousness of
artist and sitter takes place which produces what
a photograph cannot give. The photograph can


THOMAS HOWARD, VISCOUNT BINDON (d. l6io/ll)
ATTRIBUTED TO PETER OLIVER
only reflect, it can make no advances. The word
negative gives us its soul, but the attitude of the
artist—the great one—-is positive towards his sitter,
advancing, so to speak, into the last recess of the

mind of the man who sits before him, as he
portrays him. It is because the fashionable
modern exponents of Miniature assume such a
negative attitude towards their sitters that their
miniatures are so dull. They are “reflections”
which nine times out of ten are poorer than the
reflection in a lens.
To feel one man summing up another, that is
the soul of the enjoyment of portraiture. It is
the impressiveness of the judgments passed, as
expressed in one small drawing after another, that
gives to the art of Samuel Cooper an importance
that makes the scale on which he works an
irrelevant question altogether.


GENERAL MONCK (?) BY NICHOLAS DIXON
fSee miniature by S. Cooper on next page)
Cooper was the pupil of Hoskins, but contrary
to all precedents, and succeeding custom, the
pupil it was who was considered so able as to be
charged to put in the heads while the master
attached body and accessories. Apparently Cooper
acquired the habit of contenting himself with
finishing the face in his miniatures, leaving the
rest merely suggested, perhaps with a view, some-
times, to completion by another hand. It was
Cooper’s practice to work a great deal by candle-
light, as it enabled him to command more com-
pletely the shadows which reveal character.
“ Then with my wife to Cooper’s,” writes Pepys,
“ and there saw her sit; and he do do extraordinary
things indeed.”
Cooper had rivals in Thomas Flatman and
Nicholas Dixon. Flatman was a poet and essayist
as well as a painter of miniatures, and a fortune-
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