Robert Peake the Elder

Portrait of Henry, Prince of Wales (centre right), who died aged eighteen, and at left John Harington, later 2nd Lord Harington of Exton, by Robert Peake the Elder, 1603 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). A variant version in which the prince is accompanied by Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex, is in the Royal Collection, U.K., dated c. 1605

Robert Peake the Elder (c. 1551–1619) was an English painter active in the later part of Elizabeth I's reign and for most of the reign of James I.[1] In 1604, he was appointed picture maker to the heir to the throne, Prince Henry; and in 1607, serjeant-painter to King James I – a post he shared with John De Critz.[2]

Peake was the only English-born painter of a group of four artists whose workshops were closely connected. The others were De Critz, Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, and the miniature painter Isaac Oliver. Between 1590 and about 1625, they specialised in brilliantly coloured, full-length "costume pieces" that are unique to England at this time.[3] It is not always possible to attribute authorship between Peake, De Critz, Gheeraerts and their assistants with certainty.[4]

  1. ^ Edward Town, 'A Biographical Dictionary of London Painters, 1547-1625', Walpole Society Volume, 76 (2014), pp. 152-3.
  2. ^ Roy Strong, 'Elizabethan Painting: An Approach Through Inscriptions, 1: Robert Peake the Elder', The Burlington Magazine, 105:719 (February 1963), pp. 53–57.
  3. ^ "There is nothing like them in contemporary European painting", Waterhouse, Painting in Britain, p. 41.
  4. ^ Waterhouse, Painting in Britain, 41.