Nicholas Lanier

Nicholas Lanier was an musician and art dealer who dabbled in many things. Apart from anything else, he was a talented artist as this self-portrait shows, painted around 1644 whilst at court with the King in Oxford. He is simply dressed with a narrow brimmed hat and ribbon hat band of a colour that matches his doublet. The doublet appears to be of a green russet (russet was a type of woollen cloth) and simply cut with cloth or thread wrapped buttons. It’s tricky to tell which kind they are, but if you look closely you can see the knots that hold the buttons together and provide an anchor to the doublet. A neat falling band completes the wardrobe as it were. It’s very much a common man’s suit of clothes, perhaps Lanier is slumming it, or maybe he was down on his luck. He has painted a skull by his left elbow as a memento mori, which may indicate that he was struggling financially. He left England shortly after this, in Spring 1645 and didn’t return for several years. The music is one of his own compositions in case you were wondering. The picture hangs in the faculty of Music in Oxford.

Zacharias Bogan

I like this picture mainly because of the sitter’s unfeasibly 17th century name and the fact that it looks like one of those portraits in Scooby Doo where the eyes are cut out and the bad guy watches Scooby and Shaggy from a hidden passage. Having given away my age, I can also tell you that Zacharias, or Zacary was an Oxford classical scholar from Devon who broke his studies whilst the town was occupied by the King’s army, only returning to finish his BA in 1646. He is clad in his college gown and black day cap. One nice detail is the fineness of his falling band. You can see the right hand edge through the left hand overlap. Always a sign of quality. The picture hangs in Oxford Town Hall and is credited to “Shorter”