Home  / Sir John Dodderidge (1555-1628)

Panel Painting Sir John Dodderidge (1555-1628)

Object number

LDSAL1298

Artist/Designer/Maker

Unknown artist - Artist

Production date

Early 17th century

Production place

England

Material

Oak
oil paint

Technique

Oil on panel

Dimensions

Height: 690mm
Width: 590mm

Location

Burlington House - on display

Content description

Dodderidge is depicted, head and shoulders turned to the right, wearing a black bonnet tipped with scarlet, white ruff and judges’ robes of scarlet and white fur. He is deep-jowled, with a contemplative head and low indented forehead, on which is a lock of white hair; his prominent unshaven chin is sunk deep into his white ruff. The background is plain brown. The painting was cradled in 1884; and the discoloured repaint down two bad cracks with other lesser repairs probably date from this time. The face is extremely smooth and could also have been restored in the 1880s.
    Oil on panel portrait of Sir John Dodderidge (1555-1628). Framed.
    Sir John Dodderidge (1555-1628) was born in Devon, the son of a prosperous shipowner, and was a student at Exeter College, Oxford, before being called to the bar in 1585. A well-respected lawyer, he wrote a number of works on legal subjects and was appointed judge of the King’s Bench in 1612.

    One of the earliest members of the Elizabethan Society of Antiquaries founded about 1586, he and two others presented a petition to the queen shortly before her death for the establishment of ‘an Academy for the Study of Antiquity and History’, a plea that failed. His history of Wales, Cornwall and Chester was published posthumously in 1630.