Early English Portrait Painters 239 



EARLY ENGLISH PORTRAIT PAINTERS. 



It is a great mistake to suppose that England had pro- 

 duced no good portrait painters before Sir Joshua Reynolds. 

 There were three painters in England in Milton's time, two 

 of them of native birth, any one of whom might have credit- 

 ably painted his portrait. Unfortunately it is probable that 

 none of them did so, and the only quite authentic representa- 

 tion of our great poet which we possess is by an engraver 

 named Faithorne, who engraved it from his own sketch. Even 

 his original is lost, but his engravings remain and they supply 

 the somewhat sour-looking portrait which is well known and 

 has, with modifications, been copied everywhere. It repre- 

 sents Milton in almost old age (65). There are others which 

 not improbably are contemporary, but of which the artists are 

 not known and the authentification is not complete. 



Milton was born in 1608 and died 1674. Van Dyck died at 

 the age of 43, in 1641. He could not, therefore, have seen 

 Milton after he had acquired his great fame. Dobson, who 

 might be styled the English Van Dyck, and who was called 

 by Charles I. his British Tintoret, died in 1646, aged only 36. 

 Walker, who painted portaits of Cromwell, Evelyn, and many 

 others of the day, died in the same year as Van Dyck. We 

 have in the Haslemere Museum a pleasing portrait which was 

 catalogued at one of Christie and Manson's sales as Milton 

 when a young man, and is conjecturally attributed to Dobson, 

 but neither painter nor sitter can be verified. We have also 

 a small collection of engravings from Faithorne's portrait. 



William Faithorne, the engraver, was born in 1616, and was 

 thus eight years younger than Milton. He died 1691. He 

 had engraved portraits of Henrietta Maria, Cromwell, Fairfax, 

 Hobbes and many others as well as Milton. His name is 

 omitted in Pilkinton's " Dictionary of Painters," and in point 

 of fact he never did paint. 



There is in our National Portrait Gallery a fine portrait of 

 Faithorne himself, by his friend, Robert Walker, It hangs 



