Cornelius Johnson, 'Portrait of a Lady', 1655

The painter Cornelius Johnson was born in London to Protestant parents who were originally from Cologne. He was probably trained in Holland but returned to London in about 1618. This portrait of an unknown lady was painted in Holland in 1655, 12 years after Johnson left England for the final time. It is inscribed in blue paint on the lower right: Cornelius Jonson./ Van Ceulen./ fecit./ 1655.

The portrait once hung in the Great Drawing Room of Burghley House in Cambridgeshire with three other portraits by Johnson of the 1st Earl of Exeter and his family, suggesting that this lady may also have been a member of the Cecil family.

The black costume she wears was fashionable at the time. The small black cap (tipmuts) has a point over the forehead and the satin gown has broad bands of bobbin lace within the neckline and edging the opulently full turned-back oyster-coloured satin sleeves. However, the gown must have belonged to the artist rather than the lady as it appears in at least five other Johnson portraits between 1649 and 1658. It is worn by ladies of various shapes and ages, suggesting that at this stage of his career (he was 62 in 1655) Jonson painted their faces from life but their clothes from drapery in the studio, perhaps also with the help of assistants.

Other sitters portrayed in the same black dress and in almost the same pose are shown wearing necklaces, pendant earrings, bracelets and bows. Johnson probably charged extra to paint these adornments. The National Gallery’s lady has no jewellery, possibly because whoever commissioned her portrait could not afford to pay the extra fee.

The uneven pattern of light and dark patches across the background was not intended by the artist. The background is painted fairly thinly with a paint made from indigo mixed with lead white. It has faded in the upper paint layer and in exposed areas of the background. Later retouchings (repairs to the paint surface) which once would have matched the background now look dark against it. Indigo was a fairly common pigment in draperies in seventeenth-century Dutch pictures and its use here is consistent with Johnson’s training in Holland.