File:Sir Francis Wenman.jpg

English: Sir Francis Wenman (1599-1640) was an English politician who sat in the House of Commons between 1628 and 1640.

Depicted at the age of thirty-one, this portrait is by an artist whose style closely relates to that of Gilbert Jackson. It is often difficult to attach specific names to many portrait painters working in the provinces during this time, Jackson appearing to be one of the more notable with a few signed works enabling us to draw comparison. Portrayed in the height of fashion for the period, Wenman's left arm draws a black cloak around his slashed doublet, the elegant gesture setting off his ringed hand and lace cuff to much effect. The highly detailed lace collar, an extremely expensive item of clothing for the period, is equally shown to great effect by the sobriety of dress. Whilst much painterly form can be observed in the face, overall the work looks back to the flat hieratic style of the late Elizabethan Court, with the artist devoting much care to the rendition of surface, colour and texture. The result is a mixture of sophisticated painterly technique allied with a naiveté of drawing which is at once both charming and unselfconscious but noticeably old-fashioned in a Carolean court dominated by the arrival of Anthony Van Dyck.

Given this stylistic approach, it is reasonable to assume that the painter was initially trained in London, perhaps by one of the older generation of portraitists who resided there, who then moved out to work as an itinerant in the provinces - settling in one area to paint the local gentry, where he would have no competition from the better known London painters. Indeed, this portrait owes much compositionally to the work of Cornelius Johnson (1593-1661) and given the subtleties of brushwork which are evident in the face and hair, this implies a method of approach much more skilled than that of an untrained provincial painter.

With much appreciation to Timothy Langston for the above narrative as well as permission to publish.