PAUL VAN SOMER (1576-1621)

Elizabeth, Countess of Kellie (1619)

Oil on canvas 206 x 123 cm

Yale Center for British Art, Yale, Connecticut, USA

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Paul van Somer was one of the leading portraitists at the court of James I. His style was somewhere between the iconic Elizabethan portrait and the continental Baroque of Anton van Dyck. He received the earliest artistic training in his native Antwerp. By 1604 van Somer was engaged in extensive travels, painting landscapes and portraits throughout the Netherlands. He arrived in England in 1616 and quickly became the favourite of Anne of Denmark, wife of James I. Like Daniel Mytens who had settled in England from the Netherlands in 1618, and was van Somer’s neighbour in St. Martin’s Lane, Paul van Somer brought a new grandeur and naturalism to English court portraiture.

The Countess of Kellie (d. 1622) was one of the wealthiest members of the aristocracy in Jacobean England. She was the daughter of Sir Henry Pierrepont of Holme Pierrepont in Nottingham. Elizabeth was widowed twice before her marriage to Thomas Erskine (1566–1639) in 1604. It is possible that this portrait was commissioned to celebrate Erskine’s elevation as the Earl of Kellie in 1619, as well as the extraordinary wealth of the sitter. In a manner typical of the Jacobean formal court portraiture in which courtiers wished to stress their wealth and status, the lady stands before us in all her finery. Female courtiers depended on the ostentatious displays of jewels and fashionable dresses made of the most expensive fabrics to convey their standing in court portraits since – unlike their husbands, fathers or brothers – they did not have tokens of office such as wands, sashes and badges that stood as emblems of their court roles and ranking.

Her red damask dress, richly embroidered throughout with patterns of gold and silver threads has a full skirt that is used without a farthingale (a wheel-shaped rigid underskirt that was worn at the waist). The artist’s skill to reproduce the shimmering effect of her damask and the intricate pattern of the lace that decorates her cuffs, collar and bodice, is extraordinary. Her dress, gloves and lace combined with the exquisitely designed jewels proclaim boldly her wealth and high rank.

The domesticated parrot that crawls up her dress to fetch some food that she holds in the fingers of the right hand is another symbol of status; parrots and other species of exotic birds were prized as house pets and expensive curiosities in early modern England.