The Author: Richard Walker is the author of National Portrait
Gallery: Regency Portraits, Miniatures in the
Collection Of Her Majesty the Queen, and to be
published shortly, a Catalogue of Miniatures in
National Trust Houses.
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The Ashmolean collection of miniatures was
begun in the seventeenth century by the
Tradescants, father and son, gardeners to
Charles I and Henrietta Maria. Among its most
generous benefactors was the Reverend
Bentinck Hawkins, chaplain to the Dukes of
Cambridge and an insatiable nineteenth-century
collector. The miniatures, mostly of very high
quality, range from the Tudor and Stuart era to
Victorian times, and include specially distinguished
works by Isaac Oliver, Cooper, Zincke,
Smart, Cosway and Engleheart.
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