Henry Carey (1596–1661), Second Earl of Monmouth

Samuel Cooper was orphaned as a child and brought up, together with his brother Alexander (1609–?1660), also a miniaturist, by his uncle John Hoskins (active by ca. 1615–died 1665). He was the pupil and for many years the partner of Hoskins, who is said to have been jealous of his accomplishment. He set up on his own about 1641–42. He was much patronized by Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658) and the Puritans and after the Restoration by Charles II (1630–1685) and his pleasure-loving court. He was recognized in his lifetime throughout Europe as the most accomplished miniaturist of his age. At his peak, Cooper is remarkable for the breadth of his handling and the subtlety of his interpretation of character.

This is a representative example of the more restrained manner of portraiture practiced by Samuel Cooper during the Commonwealth, but it has lost some of its original force through the fading of the flesh tones. The broad brushwork may be inspired by Van Dyck and the restrained palette, angle of the head, and drapery arrangement by portrait medals (see Baetjer 1999). The miniature is consistent with the engraving of Monmouth by W. Faithorne placed as the frontispiece to his translation from Boccalini, Advertisements from Parnassus in Two Centuries; With the Political Touchstones (1656); in fact it may be the original for that engraving, though in the print the sitter's neck is bare.

Henry Carey (1596–1661), second earl of Monmouth, had little taste for public affairs and spent most of his time in retirement translating Italian and French authors. Burke's Peerage quotes Horace Walpole's observation: "We have scarce anything of his own composition, and are as little acquainted with his character as with his genius." Of his nine children, seven were daughters; his second son died of smallpox in 1641 and his eldest, Lionel, fighting for the cause of Charles I at Marston Moor in 1644.

[2015; adapted from Reynolds and Baetjer 1996]

Inscription: Signed and dated (left, in gold): S.C. / 1649; inscribed (reverse, in ink, in an old—perhaps seventeenth-century—hand): Lord Monmouth / $Mine / M:M:

Leo R. Schidlof (until 1949)

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Four Centuries of Miniature Painting," January 19–March 19, 1950, unnumbered cat. (p. 3).

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "European Miniatures in The Metropolitan Museum of Art," November 5, 1996–January 5, 1997, no. 25.

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "In Miniature," August 29–December 28, 2014, no catalogue.

Daphne Foskett. Samuel Cooper, 1609–1672. London, 1974, p. 111.

Graham Reynolds with the assistance of Katharine Baetjer. European Miniatures in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1996, pp. 12–13, 79, 81, no. 25, colorpl. 25 and ill. p. 81, suggest that the engraving by W. Faithorne was made from this miniature, although the sitter's neck is bare in the print.

Katharine Baetjer. "British Portraits in The Metropolitan Museum of Art." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 57 (Summer 1999), p. 16, ill. (color), states that Cooper's "portrait of the scholarly and retiring earl of Monmouth is broadly brushed in tribute to the example of Van Dyck" and that "the restrained palette, the angle of the head, and the arrangement of the drapery suggest that the artist was inspired by portrait medals".