Thomas Wyck (1616-1677) Portrait of Oliver Cromwell on Hors...

Hammer

€20,000

Thomas Wyck (1616-1677)

Portrait of Oliver Cromwell on Horseback, with Moorish Attendant  c 1655  O.O.C., 87cms x 69cms (34" x 27"). (1)

Provenance:

Erasmus Earle (1590-1667), thence by descent;
William Bulwer-Long, Heydon Hall, Norfolk, thence by descent until with The Weiss Gallery, Jermyn Street, London;
Private Collection, Ireland

Literature:

The Weiss Gallery, illustrious company; early portraits 1545-1720, 1998, no.21

The Weiss Gallery - 25 Years  (Illustrated, p. 150)

 

In 1657, when Parliament offered the title of King to Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658), he stayed true to his principles and refused. However, there was no escaping the fact that during these years he was effectively the sole ruler of Britain. Cromwell was concerned to project a public image that was anti-monarchical, and was determined not to be idealised. He had his portrait painted by artists as diverse as Peter Lely, Robert Walker and Samuel Cooper, all of whom were faithful to his instructions to depict him ‘warts and all’. However, some artists, notably Walker and Thomas Wyck, preferred to paint Cromwell with at least some of the trappings of monarchy. The present impressive portrait by Wyck, painted around 1655, hung for many years in Heydon Hall, seat of the Bulwer family. Built in Elizabethan times, the house has strong historical associations with Cromwell: In 1648 Erasmus Earle, lawyer, Member of Parliament and Recorder of Norwich, was appointed Cromwell’s Serjeant-at-Law. Two years later, Earle purchased Heydon Hall in Norfolk. There is a tradition of Cromwell having visited the house on several occasions, and an oak tree in the park is named “Cromwell’s Oak”. Wyck’s portrait of the Lord Protector would have been at home in this setting, and it remained at Heydon even after the house passed to the Bulwer family in the mid eighteenth century. It is a unique portrait, and no other version of it is known. Seated on a white horse, dressed in half armour, and wearing a blue sash, Cromwell holds a marshal’s baton. Beside him, with a red cape draped over his knee, stands a Moorish servant, handing him a helmet. The portrait is evidently set in North Africa, in a rocky desert landscape, with sea in the background. In April 1655, Cromwell ordered the bombardment of Tunis, and successfully secured the release of prisoners held hostage by Barbary pirates. This decisive military action would have raised him even higher in the estimation of the English public.

In creating this image of Cromwell, Thomas Wyck would have been familiar with Anthony Van Dyke’s equestrian portrait of Charles II, painted in 1633, which was in Hampton Court during those years (it is now in Buckingham Palace). Depicting the King at the gates of Paris, it was painted one year after Van Dyke was appointed ‘Painter in Ordinary’ to the monarch, and some eight years after Charles’s accession to the throne. It was engraved in 1655 by Pierre Lombart, who replaced the head of Charles I with that of Cromwell. Like Van Dyke, Wyck travelled to England from the Netherlands in search of commissions. He painted views of the city of London before the Great Fire of 1666. Although his depiction of the Protector is closely based on Van Dyke’s portrait of Charles II, he made several changes, including replacing the figure of Pierre Antoine Bourdon, Charles II’s riding master, with a Moorish servant, and substituting the triumphal arch symbolising the gates of Paris with a setting on the coast of North Africa. Cromwell’s pose is identical to Charles II in the Van Dyke portrait, although he is clean-shaven, while the King was bearded. In keeping with his wishes not to idealised, Cromwell’s hair is greying, his eyes are drooping slightly and the infamous wart is clearly visible on his chin.

Dr. Peter Murray

More Information

Colouring vibrant .
No obvious rips or tears protruding through canvas.
Contemporary Frame , with some blemishes.
Has been relined.