Bridget Holmes with Page. Bridget Holmes was a domestic servant at the English royal court in the 17th century.
Holmes was a necessary woman whose duties included emptying and scouring chamber pots and cleaning the royal apartments. She served during the reigns of Charles I, Charles II, James II, and William III and Mary II. She is best known as the subject of a full-length slightly over life-size portrait dated 1686 in the Royal Collection by John Riley, painted on a scale and in a style.normally reserved for royalty or the nobility.
Though signed by Riley, the painting may owe much to the contribution of John Closterman, who often worked with Riley, because of its impressive composition. It is not clear why James II commissioned the portrait, which was an extravagant way to celebrate her great age and her loyalty to the Stuarts, and also seems to make a satirical or moral comment on the conventions of grand portraiture, as a parody of all those martial portraits of dukes and generals.
But the figure herself is treated with great dignity, very respectfully. The joke's not on her as one curator put it. Critic Ronald Jones noted that is resonant with self-respect, and can play with her venerable position in the household; teasingly she brandishes her mop after a page-boy, a Page of the Backstairs according to the Royal Collection.
Riley painted two other, smaller, portraits of servants: Katherine Elliot
Holmes was a necessary woman whose duties included emptying and scouring chamber pots and cleaning the royal apartments. She served during the reigns of Charles I, Charles II, James II, and William III and Mary II. She is best known as the subject of a full-length slightly over life-size portrait dated 1686 in the Royal Collection by John Riley, painted on a scale and in a style.normally reserved for royalty or the nobility.
Though signed by Riley, the painting may owe much to the contribution of John Closterman, who often worked with Riley, because of its impressive composition. It is not clear why James II commissioned the portrait, which was an extravagant way to celebrate her great age and her loyalty to the Stuarts, and also seems to make a satirical or moral comment on the conventions of grand portraiture, as a parody of all those martial portraits of dukes and generals.
But the figure herself is treated with great dignity, very respectfully. The joke's not on her as one curator put it. Critic Ronald Jones noted that is resonant with self-respect, and can play with her venerable position in the household; teasingly she brandishes her mop after a page-boy, a Page of the Backstairs according to the Royal Collection.
Riley painted two other, smaller, portraits of servants: Katherine Elliot
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