Lawrence Hilliard

Who was Lawrence Hilliard?

Lawrence Hilliard was an English miniature painter.

Hilliard, a son of Nicholas Hilliard and his wife Alice Brandon – was christened on 5 March 1582. He evidently derived his Christian name from that of his grandmother, Laurence Wall, the daughter of John Wall, a London goldsmith. He was married on 4 December 1611 to Jane Farmer of St Mary-le-Bow, Cheapside – the widow of George Farmer and daughter of George Cullymore and Ellen Buckfoulde – at the church of St Savior's, Southwark. They settled in at the parish of St Bride Fleet Street, London – exactly the same church that Ananias Dare and his wife Elinor White, the daughter of John White the famous scientific illustrator of the New World, called their own parish just before they left for the colony of Roanoke, Virginia in 1587, never to return again.

Hilliard adopted his father's profession and worked out the unexpired time of his licence after Nicholas Hilliard died in 1619. It was from Lawrence Hilliard that Charles I received the portrait of Queen Elizabeth now at Montagu House, since Van der Dort's catalogue describes it as done by old Hilliard, and bought by the King of young Hilliard.