Poem in praise of Hobbes [possibly by Samuel Cooper]

This single sheet includes on the recto eighteen lines of verse in an unknown hand. The poem is complimentary of Hobbes as a philosopher and acknowledges gratitude for Hobbes's commendation of "the Picture I have drawn".

Sotheby's habe suggested that a possible candidate for authorship is the miniaturist Samuel Cooper, who, according to John Aubrey, the biographer, was a friend of Hobbes. He also painted a watercolour on vellum of Hobbes in c. 1660, which is now held at the Cleveland Museum of Art (see: https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1949.548).

The hand of this poem could be Samuel Cooper's. It seems to be very similar to what is assumed to be Samuel Cooper's hand on the back of a miniature by him in the Welbeck Portland Collection (inventory number is 001206). This, and the fact that a good likeness of Hobbes was drawn by Cooper, strengthens the likelihood that this poem was by Samuel Cooper.

• CELM ref: HbT 42.
• Formerly cited in IELM, II.i (1987) as HbT 65.
• This item is described on p. 20 of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts Report on the MSS and papers of Thomas Hobbes (1977) .

As a miniaturist Cooper was the pioneer of a method of painting the human face using a firm hatching stroke applied with the tip of the brush in red and brown, which he developed evidently while still working within the orbit of his uncle John Hoskins. The method requires considerable assurance of hand and is particularly well fitted for a draughtsman capable of seizing a sitter's likeness rapidly. In contrast to the delicate stipples of the earlier tradition of Nicholas Hilliard and Isaac Oliver the hatching style is demonstrative and painterly; its stylistic relationship to the new portraiture of Mytens and Van Dyck has often been observed. Other elements of the composition, such as architectural or landscape backgrounds, are often painted with an almost aggressive or careless breadth. Examples of early exercises in this style are the portrait of the earl of Holland against a stormy sky (Ham House, Richmond, Surrey) and that of the fourth earl of Dorset, after Van Dyck (V&A), which bears the Hoskins monogram but is surely by the young Cooper. The somewhat harsh painterly style of the late 1630s becomes very disciplined in the 1640s, the hatching in the face firm and clear, and subordinated to the need to produce a good characteristic likeness. The backgrounds are neatly painted, often plain dark brown with perhaps a flush of light reflected from the studio window behind the sitter's left shoulder. Sometimes the background is divided, as though the sitter is posed against a window or door to the outside world. This phase, during which the standard Cooper signature is the separate initials SC divided by a colon, gives way progressively to an interest in fine finish, with the brush strokes disappearing into a smooth, illusionistic surface, and, in 1653, a new signature: a loose monogram of the conjoined initials, usually with a date, appears for the first time.

[Source: Murdoch, John. "Cooper, Samuel (1607/8 1672), miniature painter." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. (Oxford University Press, 2004), https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-6226. By permission of Oxford University Press].