Portrait of James, 2nd Marquis of Hamilton (1589-1625)

Painted by Daniel Mytens (1590-1656)

A full-length portrait of James, 2nd Marquis of Hamilton makes its first appearance in Inventory M4/20, where it features as item 95, 'One picture of my lord's father at length of [blank]'. Is it the painting by Mytens shown here, where he is depicted holding his staff of office as Lord Steward of the Royal Household? That is uncertain. As with many of the pictures in Inventory M4/20, the artist's name is left blank and although the 3rd Marquis supplied the name 'mittens' for his own portrait with hat in hand and for the portrait of his wife, Lady Mary Feilding, 'to the middle, in a ruffe, with a feather in her head', he did not fill in the artist of his father's picture.

This could have been an oversight, but it could equally well have meant that he was not aware of the painter's identity. He himself had been twice painted by Mytens and he would almost certainly have known had the Lord Steward's picture been the one listed here. There were, however, others of his father by different artists, for example a portrait attributed to Van Somer. Whilst this portrait above would hang in the Gallery at Hamilton Palace until it was sold in 1919 erroneously in this catalogue attributed to Van Somer yet another full-length picture of him is still in the Hamilton Collection - dubiously attributed to Mytens. This Mytens is the best-known image, however, and a number of copies of it exist in other collections.

Whichever picture features in M4/20, the 2nd Marquis was a significant figure, the close friend of James VI and I, who granted him the Earldom of Cambridge in 1619 and made him a privy councillor of England and a gentleman of the bedchamber. He had inherited the family titles in 1604, a year after his marriage at the age of fourteen to Lady Anna Cunningham, daughter of the 7th Earl of Glencairn. After 1618 he spent most of his time at Court, becoming a naturalised Englishman and leaving his wife to run his Scottish estates. The Cambridge earldom brought him no property in the south, and his expensive lifestyle meant that, on his sudden death in 1625, he left his son an avalanche of debt, but he is particularly interesting in the present context because he was one of the earliest Britons to collect Italian Old Master Paintings.

The painting is listed in the following inventories:
Hamilton Inventory M4/20 Entry 95
Hamilton Inventory M4/21 - 'the twenty sixt case '
Hamilton Inventory M4/22/ - 'An Inventory of the Pictures that are Rolled [Up] This is 26 Case'
And possibly in:
1704 Hamilton Inventory M4/42/entry 19
Hamilton Inventory M12/1 page 4 [Line 21] - 'In the High Dining Room -
Marquis James’s picture.'

For Portraits by Van Somer that may either refer to this painting above or to one by Van Somer see:

Hamilton Inventory 7 June 1759 - M4/48 Page 1
1850's Inventory - Volume 1228
Hamilton Inventory 1876
1919 Sale Catalogue, Paintings - Illustrated Page 20 Cat 67