Sunday, June 15, 2014

The 3rd and 4th Earls of Dorset, by William Larkin, 1613



Richard Sackville, 3rd Earl of Dorset (18 March 1589, London – 28 March 1624, London), eldest son of Robert Sackville, 2nd Earl of Dorset. The 3rd Earl is perhaps best remembered as the first husband of Lady Anne Clifford. The marriage was far from successful, not least because of Sackville's repeated infidelities, and his extravagance and indebtedness; he was called "one of the seventeenth century’s most accomplished gamblers and wastrels". None of his three legitimate sons survived their father, and when he died at the age of thirty-six, he was succeeded by his younger brother.


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Edward Sackville, 4th Earl of Dorset (1591 - 17 July 1652, London), second son of Robert Sackville, 2nd Earl of Dorset. Notorious in his youth for a a duel in which, though gravely wounded himself, he killed Edward Bruce, 2nd Lord Kinloss. Considered one of the handsomest men of his day, he was an energetic and successful politician and courtier. He was directly involved in the early colonization of North America and, later, he supported the Royalist cause during the English Civil War. After the execution of the King in 1649, the Earl is said to have never again left his home, Salisbury Court, where he died at the age sixty-one. His eldest son, Richard, succeeded him as 5th Earl.


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William Larkin (early 1580s – April or May1619), English painter active from 1609 until his death in 1619, known for his iconic portraits of members of the court of James I.  His work is characterized by a fairly frontal, lightly modeled presentation of his subject, set against an unnaturally raked background, and opulently adorned in embroidery, lace, and jewelry, all meticulously described.  He was the last in a line of a particular strain of English portrait painting that included the later Holbein the Younger and Nicholas Hilliard; writing in 1960, Sir David Piper said of his work, "Artistically, they are a dead end, but they have a strange and fascinating splendour."



2 comments:

  1. Oh lord you do know how to get my sartorial blood going, don't you? I wanna get all glammed out and shit, now. It will be all your fault, or to your credit, depending. (grin)

    ReplyDelete