Whenever people talk of miniaturists, the first names that jump to my mind are usually Samuel Cooper or Nicholas Hilliard, but I’ve been learning about another who flourished in the  17th century, born under the reign of James I, and enjoying a career that survived Charles I, Oliver Cromwell, and Charles II, before ending in the time of William and Mary at the turn of the next century.

Richard Gibson by Peter Lely, painted 1658, ©National Portrait Gallery, London

Known as “Dwarf Gibson”,  standing at just 3’10” tall,  Richard was a lifelong courtier, and also a talented artist who studied under Francis Cleyn,  director of design at the Mortlake Tapestry Works.¹   As something of a celebrity in the court of Charles I, he married one of Queen Henrietta Maria’s serving ladies, Anne Shepherd (also a dwarf),  who was given away by King Charles himself. Gibson was also the subject of poems by Andrew Marvell and Edmund Waller. Richard and Anne would have nine children, three of whom also became painters. The best known, daughter Susan, also painted miniatures.

In later years, Richard remained an important figure at Court, being appointed drawing-master to Princess Mary and Princess Anne, and travelling to the Netherlands with Mary on the occasion of her marriage to William of Orange.

“Portrait of Mary Villiers, Duchess of Richmond and Lennox, with her dwarf Mrs. Gibson”, by Anthony Van Dyck, 1638. ©Los Angeles County Museum of Arts

While Richard and his wife appear in several large canvases by other hands, his own works were primarily miniature portraits, his technique “characterized by the thick pigment and parallel striations that give his work an impastoed quality”.² His sitters included the highest members of English Court and society.

Barbara Villiers, Duchess of Cleveland (1640-1709)

Anne Hyde, Duchess of York (1637-1671)

An unknown gentleman

Unknown woman, perhaps Elizabeth Capel, Countess of Carnarvon
©V&A

Unknown boy, ©V&A

¹) Cleyn is also said to have had a hand in training William Dobson, who was curiously claimed as the painter of a Cromwell portrait sold at a late 17th century auction, under the name “Dobson the Dwarf”. Clearly there was a bit of a mix up in attributions here, but as Royalist Dobson is unlikely to have ever painted Cromwell, and Gibson painted primarily miniatures, it’s doubtful the said painting had anything to do with either.

²) Richard Gibson, Grove Dictionary of Art