Foster 15

Full-length portrait of an unidentified soldier, probably a Polish mercenary leader, c.1630.

He wears a fur cap, a close-fitting leather jerkin trimmed with fur, and a dark cloak ornamented with braid and lined with blue. A sash is twisted round his waist supporting a powder flask, and a small decorated pouch is slung by a strap from his left shoulder. He holds a wheel-lock pistol in his gloved hands. In the background to the right is a polished column.

Oil on canvas; 68 by 36 ins (172 by 91.5 cms)

Circumstances of acquisition unrecorded

Nothing can be traced in the India Office Records concerning this painting or how it became the property of the East India Company. After the refurbishing of East India House in 1726-29, the East India Company was usually punctilious in recording the details and dates of its acquisitions. The lack of such details therefore suggests a date prior to 1726. Moreover the style of the painting and the costume of the figure would confirm a date in the first half of the seventeenth century. The wheel-lock pistol and powder flask can be dated to c.1620. An old India Office tradition originally connected the painting with Peter the Great (1672-1725) but Sir William Foster, after consulting with authorities in Moscow, ruled out the possibility of connecting the portrait with Russia since in the seventeenth century all Russians were bearded and wore their hair long (see Foster Notebook A, p.365 IOR:L/R/5). The only country in Central Europe that departed from this custom was Poland where by the early seventeenth century hair was short with a small peak high on the forehead (see Tadeus Do'Browolski, ‘Polskie Malarstwo Portretowe’ (Krakow, 1948), fig 4). The costume appears to be that worn by the famous Polish mercenaries (such as the ‘Lissowski Division’) who at this time were fighting in Bohemia, the Rhineland and the Low Countries, almost up to Paris. Such costumes are depicted in the drawings probably representing Polish soldiers of fortune, c.1620 by Roelant Savery (1576-1639) in the British Museum (see M Paszkiewicz, ‘Museum Polski’ (London, 1968-1975), plates 146, 148, 150, 154, and English summary, pp.243-4), as well as in etchings and drawings by Stefano della Bella showing visits of the Polish Embassies to Rome in 1633 and to Paris in 1645.

At this time England was having political contacts with Poland. In 1621 a young Polish Ambassador, Jerzy Ossolinski (1595-1650) visited England and made a speech in Latin which was translated and published in both French and English. Poland was involved in political difficulties with Turkey and was seeking to form a league against it. The embassy had come to Britain to try to recruit Scottish soldiers of fortune. On 22 June 1633 another Polish ambassador, Jan Zawadzki, arrived in England to inform Charles I that Ladzlias IV had been elected King of Poland (see A Przybos and R Zelewski, ‘Diplomats in the Od Tme, 16th to 18th centuries’ (Krakow, 1959).

During this period the East India Company for its part was becoming interested in trade with and via South East Europe. In January 1619 the Court Minutes record that a committee ‘should consider procuring a kind of calico worn in Poland by the ladies about their necks like towels’. In 1630, when discussing sales of cloth, it was noted that some ‘will find vent for Turkey or Poland’. The Company was also interested in possible trade relations with Persia via Central Europe and the Volga. It was possibly as a result of contacts such as these that the painting reached East India House.