Clouet was one of a family of limners whose work was the best of the day, and his drawings should be seen and studied by all who wish to realise how admirable that work was in expression and character. It is to be seen to the best advantage in the Print Department of the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, and also in the large series now preserved in the Palace of Chantilly, the ancestral home of the Condés.
By Hilliard I do not recall anything else very remarkable at Windsor, unless a small circular picture of a girl wearing the roses of York and Lancaster in her hair, which came from the Sackville Bale Collection and is said to represent Lady Jane Grey, is his work. But in the works of the Olivers, both father and son, the Royal Collection is rich. Among portraits by Isaac Oliver there is the extremely interesting and elaborate miniature, before referred to, representing Sir Philip Sidney seated under a tree, presumably at his birthplace, Penshurst, with a background of the formal Italian garden then so much in vogue (see p. 295). As this famous scholar, statesman, and soldier died in 1586, the work must be a comparatively early example of Isaac Oliver, who would be under thirty years of age at that time. A piece probably much later is one of no less importance, namely a portrait of Prince Henry Frederick, eldest son of James I., that "sweet royal bud" and "hope of the Puritans" who died in 1612. An entry in the catalogue of Van der Doort is as follows: "Imprimis. Done upon the right light. The biggest limned picture that was made of Prince Henry, being limned in a set laced ruff and gilded armour and a landskip, wherein are some soldiers and tents, in a square frame with a shutting glass over it. Done by Isaac Oliver. Length five and a quarter inches, breadth four inches."
[Illustration: PETER OLIVER, AFTER SIR A. VAN DYCK.
Worthy to be ranked with these is another large miniature of Charles II., which is even more highly finished than the two masterpieces, viz., Monck and Monmouth, which I described in Chapter VII.--that is to say, it is more finished throughout, because painting--in the head only was a characteristic of Samuel Cooper. Probably he found the painting of the drapery, background, and details somewhat irksome, and having got the head and the character of the portrait, was often wont to leave the completion of the picture until a more convenient season. Be the reason what it may, there is no doubt that several of the finest things that he ever painted are left in the unfinished state of which Walpole has complained in his "Anecdotes of Painting." There is, however, another miniature in the Royal Collection by this great artist which may be appropriately mentioned here, and that is a portrait of the man who sent the unfortunate "Mr. Crofts" to the scaffold. The cold, implacable nature of James II. is admirably and most forcefully suggested in this superb miniature. It represents him in armour when he was probably Duke of York, and may have been painted after his return from fighting the Dutch off the Texel. But the riches of this collection, numbering as it does not less than a thousand examples, are such that we must pass on.