Robert Peake the Elder (–1619) was an English painter active in the later part of Elizabeth I's reign and for most of the reign of James I.Edward Town, 'A Biographical Dictionary of London Painters, 1547-1625', Walpole Society Volume, 76 (2014), pp. 152-3. In 1604, he was appointed picture maker to the heir to the throne, Prince Henry; and in 1607, serjeant-painter to King James I – a post he shared with John De Critz.Roy Strong, 'Elizabethan Painting: An Approach Through Inscriptions, 1: Robert Peake the Elder', The Burlington Magazine, 105:719 (February 1963), pp. 53–57.

Peake was the only English-born painter of a group of four artists whose workshops were closely connected. The others were De Critz, Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, and the miniature painter Isaac Oliver. Between 1590 and about 1625, they specialised in brilliantly coloured, full-length "costume pieces" that are unique to England at this time."There is nothing like them in contemporary European painting", Waterhouse, Painting in Britain, p. 41. It is not always possible to attribute authorship between Peake, De Critz, Gheeraerts and their assistants with certainty.Waterhouse, Painting in Britain, 41.

A family of painters Peake married Elizabeth Beckwith, probably in 1579.Edward Town, 'A Biographical Dictionary of London Painters, 1547-1625', Walpole Society Volume, 76 (2014), p. 152. He is often called "the elder", to distinguish him from his son, the painter and print seller William Peake (–1639) and from his grandson, Sir Robert Peake (–67), who followed his father into the family print-selling business. In the accounts for Prince Henry's funeral, Robert Peake is called "Mr Peake the elder painter",Edward Town, 'A Biographical Dictionary of London Painters, 1547-1625', Walpole Society Volume, 76 (2014), p. 153. and William Peake, "Mr Peake the younger painter".Mary Edmond, Hilliard & Oliver, p. 155. Peake's grandson Sir Robert Peake (sometimes wrongly called his son) was knighted by King Charles I during the English Civil War. The Parliamentarians captured him after their siege of Basing House, which was under his command.Walpole, Anecdotes of Painting, 221.

Career Early life and work

Peake was born to a Lincolnshire family in about 1551.Hearn, Dynasties, 186. He began his training on 30 April 1565 under Laurence Woodham,Edmond, Hilliard & Oliver, 153. who lived at the sign of "The Key" in Goldsmith's Row, Westcheap."The Key" would have been a sign, identifying Woodham's shop and house, as was usual before street-numbering. He was apprenticed, three years after the miniaturist Nicholas Hilliard, to the Goldsmiths' Company in London.Edward Town, 'A Biographical Dictionary of London Painters, 1547-1625', Walpole Society Volume, 76 (2014), p. 153: It was once assumed that Peake was much younger than Hilliard: in 1969, Roy Strong described Peake as Hilliard's "most important follower among the younger generation", The English Icon p. 19: Mary Edmond, 'New Light on Jacobean Painters', 74. He became a freeman of the company on 20 May 1576. His son William later followed in his father's footsteps as a freeman of the Goldsmiths' Company and a portrait painter.Edmond, Hilliard & Oliver, 153. Peake's training would have been similar to that of John de Critz and Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, who may have been pupils of the Flemish artist Lucas de Heere.Waterhouse, Painting in Britain, 43.

Peake is first recorded as a painter in 1576 in the pay of the Office of the Revels, the department that oversaw court festivities for Elizabeth I.Edward Town, 'A Biographical Dictionary of London Painters, 1547-1625', Walpole Society Volume, 76 (2014), p. 152. When Peake began practising as a portrait painter is uncertain.Weiss (2001 and 2006) judges Peake's earliest attributed works to be the portraits of Arthur, Lord Grey de Wilton, and Humphrey Wingfield, dated 1587, following Strong's English Icon of 1969. The portrait of Anne Knollys attributed to Peake in the Berger Collection at the Denver Art Museum, however, bears Peake's characteristic inscription and is dated 1582. According to art historian Roy Strong, he was "well established" in London by the late 1580s, with a "fashionable clientele".Strong, English Icon, 225. Payments made to him for portraits are recorded in the Rutland accounts at Belvoir in the 1590s.Strong, "An Approach Through Inscriptions", 53. A signed portrait from 1593, known as the "Military Commander", shows Peake's early style. Other portraits have been grouped with it on the basis of similar lettering. Its three-quarter-length portrait format is typical of the time.

Painter to Prince Henry

In 1607, after the death of Leonard Fryer,Leonard Fryer had been serjeant-painter since 1595. Peake was appointed serjeant-painter to King James I, sharing the office with John De Critz, who had held the post since 1603.Edward Town, 'A Biographical Dictionary of London Painters, 1547-1625', Walpole Society Volume, 76 (2014), p. 153. The role entailed the painting of original portraits and their reproduction as new versions, to be given as gifts or sent to foreign courts, as well as the copying and restoring of portraits by other painters in the royal collection.

In addition to copying and restoring portraits, the serjeant-painters also undertook decorative tasks, such as the painting of banners and stage scenery.Gaunt, Court Painting in England, 53. Parchment rolls of the Office of the Works record that De Critz oversaw the decorating of royal houses and palaces. Since Peake's work is not recorded there, it seems as if De Critz took responsibility for the more decorative tasks, while Peake continued his work as a royal portrait painter. However, Peake and Paul Isackson painted the cabins, carvings, and armorials on the ship the Prince Royal in 1611.Perrin, W. G., The Autobiography of Phineas Petit, NRS (1918), p.77, & Appendix v., pp.207-210, painting account

In 1610, Peake was described as "painter to Prince Henry", the sixteen-year-old prince who was gathering around him a significant cultural salon. Peake commissioned a translation of Books I-V of Sebastiano Serlio's Architettura, which he dedicated to the prince in 1611. Scholars have deduced from payments made to Peake that his position as painter to Prince Henry led to his appointment as serjeant-painter to the king. The payments were listed by the Prince's household officer Sir David Murray as disbursements from the Privy Purse to "Mr Peck". On 14 October 1608, Peake was paid £7 for "pictures made by His Highness’ command"; and on 14 July 1609, he was paid £3 "for a picture of His Highness which was given in exchange for the King’s picture". At about the same time, Isaac Oliver was paid £5.10s.0d. for each of three miniatures of the prince. Murray's accounts reveal, however, that the prince was paying more for tennis balls than for any picture.Edmond, Hilliard & Oliver, 153. In April 1509, the prince paid £8 for tennis balls, in May £7.10s.0d., and in June £8.14s.0d .

Peake is also listed in Sir David Murray's accounts for the period between 1 October 1610 and 6 November 1612, drawn up to the day on which Henry, Prince of Wales, died, possibly of typhoid fever, at the age of eighteen: "To Mr Peake for pictures and frames £12; two great pictures of the Prince in arms at length sent beyond the seas £50; and to him for washing, scouring and dressing of pictures and making of frames £20.4s.0d".Edmond, Hilliard & Oliver, 154. The relatively high price for the two pictures of the prince in arms (armour) may have been due to the use of gold or silver on the details. Peake is listed in the accounts for Henry's funeral under "Artificers and officers of the Works" as "Mr Peake the elder painter".Edward Town, 'A Biographical Dictionary of London Painters, 1547-1625', Walpole Society Volume, 76 (2014), p. 153. He was allotted seven yards of mourning cloth, plus four for his servant. Also listed is "Mr Peake the younger painter", meaning Robert's son William, who was allotted four yards of mourning cloth.Edmond, Hilliard & Oliver, 155.

After the prince's death, Peake moved on to the household of Henry's brother, Charles, Duke of York, the future Charles I of England. Accounts for 1616 call Peake the Prince's painter, recording that he was paid £35 for "three several pictures of his Highness".Edmond, Hilliard & Oliver, 174. On 10 July 1613, he was paid £13.6s.8d. by the vice-chancellor of the University of Cambridge, "in full satisfaction for Prince Charles his picture", for a full-length portrait which is still in the Cambridge University Library.Hearn, Dynasties, 189.

Death Peake died in 1619, in the middle of October, as his will shows.Edward Town, 'A Biographical Dictionary of London Painters, 1547-1625', Walpole Society Volume, 76 (2014), p. 153 Until relatively recently, it was believed that Peake died later. Erna Auerbach, put his death at around 1625,Tudor Artists, London, 1954, p. 148. and the catalogue for the 1972 The Age of Charles I exhibition at the Tate Gallery suggested Peake was active as late as 1635. His will was made on 10 October 1619 and proved on the 16th.Edmond, Hilliard & Oliver, 170, 212.

The date of his burial is unknown because the registers of his parish church, St Sepulchre-without-Newgate, were destroyed in the Great Fire of London.Edmond, 'New Light on Jacobean Painters', 74. The fires also burned life records of the artist William Larkin. This was a time of several deaths in the artistic community. Nicholas Hilliard had died in January 1619; Anne of Denmark, who had done so much to patronise the arts, in March; and the painter William Larkin, Peake's neighbour, in April or May.Edmond, Hilliard & Oliver, 170. Though James I reigned until 1625, art historian Roy Strong considers that the year 1619 "can satisfactorily be accepted as the terminal date of Jacobean painting".Edmond, 'New Light on Jacobean Painters', 74.

Paintings

It is difficult to attribute and date portraits of this period because painters rarely signed their work, and their workshops produced portraits en masse, often sharing standard portrait patterns. Some paintings, however, have been attributed to Peake on the basis of the method of inscribing the year and the sitter's age on his documented portrait of a "military commander" (1592), which reads: "M.BY.RO.| PEAKE" ("made by Robert Peake").See Strong, "An Approach Through Inscriptions", 53–7, and The English Icon, 225–54. Art historian Ellis Waterhouse, however, suspected that the letterer may have worked for more than one studio.Waterhouse, Painting in Britain, 42–3.

Procession Picture

The painting known as Queen Elizabeth going in procession to Blackfriars in 1601, or simply The Procession Picture (see illustration), is now often accepted as the work of Peake. The attribution was made by Roy Strong, who called it "one of the great visual mysteries of the Elizabethan age".Strong, Cult of Elizabeth, 17. It is an example of the convention, prevalent in the later part of her reign, of painting Elizabeth as an icon, portraying her as much younger and more triumphant than she was. As Strong puts it, "[t]his is Gloriana in her sunset glory, the mistress of the set piece, of the calculated spectacular presentation of herself to her adoring subjects". George Vertue, the eighteenth-century antiquarian, called the painting "not well nor ill done".Vertue's Notebooks, quoted by Strong, Cult of Elizabeth, 20.