Portrait of a Nobleman (1675/1700): Artwork and History

Portrait of a Nobleman (1675/1700) is in the Art Institute of Chicago collection. The museum lists its creator attribution as William Gibson (English, 1644–1703).

The work and its context

The Art Institute of Chicago describes the work:

Portrait miniatures like this one were popular as gifts and keepsakes in 17th-century England. They were mounted under glass in fine metal frames or lockets to be worn close to the body or held in the hand as visual vessels of memory. The dress and hairstyle of this subject were fashionable over 30 to 40 years before the work was painted, indicating that it may be a posthumous copy of an earlier portrait of a beloved family member or an admired person.

Object facts

• Title: Portrait of a Nobleman
• Date: 1675/1700
• Artist attribution: William Gibson (English, 1644–1703)
• Place of origin: England
• Medium: Watercolor heightened with gum arabic on paper
• Dimensions: 7.5 × 5.9 cm (2 15/16 × 2 5/16 in.); Framed: 9.5 × 6.4 cm (3 3/4 × 2 1/2 in.)
• Type: Miniature Painting
• Department: Painting and Sculpture of Europe
• Reference number: 1958.65

Collection credit

Colonel Alexander F. and Jeannie C. Stevenson Memorial Collection

View the original

Explore the artwork in the Art Institute's collection, including its image and the museum's current catalogue details.

The description above is credited to the Art Institute of Chicago and reused under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0; HTML formatting has been converted to plain text. Other catalogue metadata and the public-domain image are provided under CC0 1.0.