John Souch. John Souch was an English portrait painter.
He flourished in the early seventeenth century in the North West of England, and perhaps epitomises the role of art in English local life at that time. John Souch was baptised on 3 February 1593/4 at Ormskirk, Lancashire In 1607, he was apprenticed for a term of ten years to Randle Holme I, the Chester Herald painter and antiquary.
In 1600 and again in 1606 Holme had been appointed a deputy herald of the College of Arms in Cheshire, Lancashire and North Wales. A Herald Painter usually had a workshop in which all manner of heraldic devices and coats of arms were created for status conscious local gentry and nobility.
These would be painted on boards for display on special occasions. A hatchment, a lozenge shaped board, would be carried at a funeral and then hung above the tomb.
However, the more talented herald painters sometimes branched out into portraiture, to satisfy a growing market for images to record betrothals, births, and deaths. Souch was clearly gifted in this direction, and consequently prospered under Holme's tutelage. He became a Freeman of the City of Chester in 1616, when he was twenty three. Painters in Chester, as elsewhere in England at the time, were regarded as craftsmen. Consequently, he became a member of the Chester Painters and Stationers Company, a painters' Guild that met in the upper room of the Phoenix Tow
He flourished in the early seventeenth century in the North West of England, and perhaps epitomises the role of art in English local life at that time. John Souch was baptised on 3 February 1593/4 at Ormskirk, Lancashire In 1607, he was apprenticed for a term of ten years to Randle Holme I, the Chester Herald painter and antiquary.
In 1600 and again in 1606 Holme had been appointed a deputy herald of the College of Arms in Cheshire, Lancashire and North Wales. A Herald Painter usually had a workshop in which all manner of heraldic devices and coats of arms were created for status conscious local gentry and nobility.
These would be painted on boards for display on special occasions. A hatchment, a lozenge shaped board, would be carried at a funeral and then hung above the tomb.
However, the more talented herald painters sometimes branched out into portraiture, to satisfy a growing market for images to record betrothals, births, and deaths. Souch was clearly gifted in this direction, and consequently prospered under Holme's tutelage. He became a Freeman of the City of Chester in 1616, when he was twenty three. Painters in Chester, as elsewhere in England at the time, were regarded as craftsmen. Consequently, he became a member of the Chester Painters and Stationers Company, a painters' Guild that met in the upper room of the Phoenix Tow
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