English School, 17th century

Lords Leigh of Stoneleigh Abbey, Warwickshire;

Thence by descent to Rupert William Dudley (1908-1979), 4th Baron Leigh of Stoneleigh, Stoneleigh Abbey, Warwickshire;

By whom sold ("The Property of the Rt. Hon. The Lord Leigh removed from Stoneleigh Abbey, Warwickshire"), London, Christie's, 5 April 1963, lot 48;

Where acquired by "Gibbs";

With Lane Fine Art, London;

From whom acquired by the present collector, 1985.

E. Waterhouse, The Dictionary of 16th & 17th Century British Painters, Suffolk 1988, p. 153 (as inscribed "1594 Sam Kyrke");

M. Airs, "Samuel and Zachary Kyrke, Painters of Lichfield" in Historic Buildings & Places 60 (2016), p.75.

This English School portrait depicts Sir Christopher Hoddesdon, one of the most successful English merchants of the late Tudor and early Stuart period. A central figure in England’s early overseas trade, Hoddesdon began his career as an apprentice to the merchant and haberdasher Sir George Barne, whose granddaughter he later married: an alliance that strengthened his position within London’s mercantile elite. Rising rapidly through the Russian trade, he served as head of the English factories at Moscow and later at Narva, amassing exceptional profits and organizing armed merchant shipping, including a notable victory over Polish pirates in the Gulf of Finland. From the 1570s he acted as a trusted financial agent of Elizabeth I in Germany and the Low Countries, handling major loans and military financing, while also serving as master of the Merchants Adventurers and defending their corporate privileges. He later held public office as sheriff of Bedfordshire and Member of Parliament for Cambridge, was knighted by James I in 1603, and died in 1610/11—embodying the transformation of the international merchant into a landed and political figure.

The present work's rare full-length format for a non-aristocratic sitter underscores Hoddesdon’s exceptional status. Clad in a fur-lined cloak and holding the staff of office of the Worshipful Company of Haberdashers, he is presented with the authority and gravitas of a civic governor, distilling his ascent from apprentice to knighted merchant-statesman. The painting closely relates to a posthumous half-length portrait from 1632 by Samuel Kyrke, a member of a Midlands family of painters active from the late sixteenth century, who is first recorded in 1594 as having painted a full-length portrait of Hoddesdon. The present work appears to have been in the collection of the Lords Leigh at Stoneleigh Abbey, likely commissioned in connection with Hoddesdon’s familial ties to the estate through his daughter’s marriage into the Leigh family.