{"meta":{"version":"2.1","_links":{"self":{"href":"https://api.vam.ac.uk/v2/object/O754274"},"collection_page":{"href":"https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O754274/"}},"images":{"_primary_thumbnail":"https://framemark.vam.ac.uk/collections/2017KN3816/full/!100,100/0/default.jpg","_iiif_image":"https://framemark.vam.ac.uk/collections/2017KN3816/","_alt_iiif_image":[],"imageResolution":"high","_images_meta":[{"assetRef":"2017KN3816","copyright":"©Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false},{"assetRef":"2012FP6152","copyright":"© Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false},{"assetRef":"2011EV0526","copyright":"© Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false},{"assetRef":"2017JU3203","copyright":"©Victoria and Albert Museum, London","sensitiveImage":false}]},"see_also":{"_iiif_pres":"https://iiif.vam.ac.uk/collections/O754274/manifest.json","_alt_iiif_pres":[]}},"record":{"systemNumber":"O754274","accessionNumber":"E.542-1929","objectType":"Drawing","titles":[{"title":"Studies of four heads","type":""}],"summaryDescription":"Although best known as a miniaturist and pupil of Nicholas Hilliard, Isaac Oliver was also a prolific draughtsman and was arguably the first artist in England to use drawing as an independent art form; he created a number of highly-finished autonomous drawings using a wide range of materials including pen and ink, chalk, wash, bodycolour and coloured papers. Most importantly of all, Oliver introduced a new concept to England: that drawing could be a dynamic, spontaneous activity, ideally suited to the jotting down of quick visual notes, rather than, as his master Hilliard had used it, a tool whose use was limited to the setting out of a composition’s basic contours. However, although his lively drawings have the air of having been made directly from the life, they are mostly based on existing visual sources. 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H. Stephenson Bequest","dimensions":[{"dimension":"Height","value":"6.5","unit":"cm","qualifier":"","date":{"text":"","earliest":null,"latest":null},"part":"","note":""},{"dimension":"Width","value":"6.7","unit":"cm","qualifier":"","date":{"text":"","earliest":null,"latest":null},"part":"","note":""}],"dimensionsNote":"","marksAndInscriptions":[],"objectHistory":"R. H. Stephenson bequest ","historicalContext":"","briefDescription":"Drawing by Isaac Oliver, studies of four heads, pen and ink and red wash, ca. 1610","bibliographicReferences":[{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"Owens, Susan, <u>The Art of Drawing British Masters and Methods since 1600</u>, V&A Publishing, London, 2013, p. 24, fig. 8"},{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"Jill Finstein, ‘Isaac Oliver: Art at the Courts of Elizabeth I and James I’; a Ph.D. thesis presented to the Department of Fine Arts, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., 1979: ‘Although both  more delicate and more straightforward (ie. less apparently “artificial” than their source), the figures are typologically and technically derived from Jacques de Gheyn’s similar studies dating probably from the late nineties and early years of the seventeenth century.’ (cat.211.) "},{"reference":{"text":"","id":""},"details":"","free":"<u>Victoria and Albert Museum, Department of Engraving, Illustration and Design and Department of Paintings, Accessions 1929</u>, London: Board of Education, 1930."},{"reference":{"text":"Damiët Schneeweisz, Rosalind McKever, and Adriana Concin. <i>The Portrait Miniature: A New History</i>. London: Thames & Hudson and the V&A, 2026.","id":"AUTH411474"},"details":"","free":""}],"production":"","productionType":{"text":"","id":""},"contentDescription":"","contentPlaces":[],"associatedPlaces":[],"contentPerson":[],"associatedPerson":[],"contentOrganisations":[],"associatedOrganisations":[],"contentPeople":[],"associatedPeople":[],"contentEvents":[],"associatedEvents":[],"contentOthers":[],"contentConcepts":[],"contentLiteraryRefs":[],"galleryLabels":[],"partNumbers":["E.542-1929"],"accessionNumberNum":"542","accessionNumberPrefix":"E","accessionYear":1929,"otherNumbers":[],"copyNumber":"","aspects":["WHOLE"],"assets":[],"recordModificationDate":"2025-12-23","recordCreationDate":"2009-06-30","availableToBook":false}}