Nicholas Hilliard was only ten years old when he stood in a Calvinist church in Geneva, listening to John Knox preach, a boy from Exeter far from the English court he would one day serve. Born in 1547 to Richard Hilliard, a goldsmith and Sheriff of Exeter, and Laurence Wall, a goldsmith's daughter, Hilliard grew up in a family of four boys where three would follow their father into the trade of goldsmithing. His early years were marked by religious upheaval; when Queen Mary I, a Catholic, took the throne, his family's Protestant connections forced them into exile, and young Nicholas traveled with the household of John Bodley, father of the future founder of the Bodleian Library. This exile was not merely a political necessity but a formative education; while his companion Thomas Bodley studied classical texts under leading scholars, Hilliard absorbed fluent French and the artistic currents of the continent, skills that would later distinguish him from his English contemporaries. By the time he returned to England, he had already painted a self-portrait at age thirteen and, at eighteen, a portrait of Mary, Queen of Scots, demonstrating a precocious talent that would soon catch the eye of the most powerful woman in Europe.
The Goldsmiths Court
Hilliard's entry into the professional world was secured through an apprenticeship with Robert Brandon, the Queen's jeweller, a man who held the title of city chamberlain of London. After seven years of training, Hilliard became a freeman of the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths in 1569, establishing a workshop with his younger brother John. His marriage in 1576 to Alice Brandon, the daughter of his master, produced seven children, including Daniel, Elizabeth, Francis, Laurence, Lettice, Penelope, and Robert, alongside a stillborn son buried in 1584. Yet, despite his royal connections, money was a persistent and bitter companion. Hilliard invested in a Scottish gold mine in 1574 with Cornelius de Vos, a venture that failed spectacularly and left him with a grudge that lasted twenty-five years. His financial struggles were so severe that in 1601, he wrote to Secretary of State Robert Cecil asking for permission to retire to the countryside, citing the competition from his own trained apprentices who had flooded the private market. Even as he secured an annual allowance of £40 from Queen Elizabeth in 1599 and later a monopoly on producing miniatures of James I in 1617, he was briefly imprisoned in Ludgate Prison for standing surety for another's debt, a humiliation that underscored the precarious nature of his existence.The French Interlude
In 1576, the recently married Hilliard left England for France with the stated intent of increasing his knowledge and earning money to support his return, a journey that would fundamentally alter his artistic trajectory. He stayed with Sir Amyas Paulet, the English Ambassador, and immersed himself in the artistic circles of the French court, meeting figures like Germain Pilon and George of Ghent, and even receiving a double-edged compliment from the poet Ronsard who noted that while the islands seldom produced cunning men, when they did, they were of high perfection. During this time, he worked under the name Nicholas Belliart for François, Duke of Anjou, a suitor of Queen Elizabeth, receiving a stipend of 200 livres and producing portraits of Madame de Sourdis and Gabrielle d'Estrées. Recent research on two large-scale paintings at Waddesdon Manor, painted on French oak rather than the Baltic oak common in England, suggests these works date to his time in France and support the attribution of the famous Phoenix and Pelican portraits to him. This period of exposure to French art and the continental court provided a breadth of experience that his English peers lacked, allowing him to develop a style that was technically conservative yet infused with a freshness and charm that would define the visual image of Elizabethan England.