Having trained under his father, Henry Bone (1755-1834), Henry Pierce Bone became a successful and respected miniaturist and enamellist in his own right. He was truly his father’s student and is known to have used some of his preparatory drawings to produce copies on enamel. After the death of his father in 1834, he continued to produce a series of historical enamels of the Kings and Queens of England, from Edward III to Queen Victoria, a subject matter that he would have been used to, as he had worked as Enamel Painter to William IV, Queen Adelaide, the Duchess of Kent and to Prince Albert. His examples of work on enamel, like the present, are exceptional, and the result of a painstakingly difficult process of creation.

Knighted by Charles I in 1639, Sir Charles Lucas was one of eight children of Sir Thomas Lucas (1573-1625). During the English Civil Wars, he naturally fought on the side of the King, and served in the Royalist army alongside Prince Rupert until 1644. Lucas was a skilled and brave leader within the army, and Edward Hyde, 1st Earl Clarendon, despite his criticism, described him as 'very brave in his person, and in a day of battle a gallant man to look upon and follow'[1]. At the Battle of Marston Moor, in July 1644, Lucas was taken prisoner, but in the winter of the same year was freed through exchange and appointed the Governor of Berkeley Castle. In March 1646, he was taken prisoner again at Stow-on-the Wold, as second-in-command to Sir Jacob Astley. Though he was released on parole by Fairfax, taking an oath to not bear arms against parliament in the future.

This was not the end of Lucas’s Royalist career, however. In 1648 he would join the Royalist insurgents of Essex in occupying Colchester, which they entered on June 13th. This occupation was soon ended by Fairfax and his troops, who swiftly up from Kent, and entered the city on the 28th August. Though some of his fellow insurgents were saved by Fairfax to await their judgement in Parliament, Lucas was forced to surrender to mercy, meaning that his sentence was left up to the commander. He was taken to Colchester Castle, and shot by six dragoons. It is said that before his death he was kissed by his fellow Royalist Sir George Lisle, who would be shot next.

It may have been Bone’s royal connection that influenced him to depict Lucas two centuries after his death. The Royalist became a martyr, and a symbol of the sacrifices that were made for the Royal Family during the turbulent years of the seventeenth century. One gets an impression of the strength of Lucas from the composition of the miniature. Lucas is dressed in a striking red jacket, and stands against a moody sky. It is possible that this could have been created to commemorate the death of the brave soldier, exactly two hundred years after his death.

[1]Edward Hyde, 1st Earl Clarendon, 1702-04, The History of Rebellion, vol.XI, p.108.