A Highly Important Portrait Miniature of a young Gentleman, facing left in embroidered black silk doublet with elaborately embroidered lace cuffs and stiff collar, long fair curled hair falling on his collar in a lovelock, black hooped earring, holding his right hand to his chest; folded red curtain background

This miniature can be dated circa 1610/15 due to the freedom of Oliver's later style and to the type of lace edged collar the sitter is wearing. Oliver's full length portrait of Richard Sackville, 3rd Earl of Dorset dated 1616, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, shows the sitter in the exact same wide starched linen collar with lace edge that was particularly fashionable at this time.
The hair worn in the 'love lock' over the shoulder was a courtier's affectation that was introduced circa 1594 by Shakespeare's patron, Henry Wriothesely, 3rd Earl of Southampton and can be compared to Oliver's miniature of Dudley North, 3rd Baron North in the Yale Centre for British Art (P. J. Noon, English Portrait Drawings, New Haven, 1979, no. 3, ill. p. 4).
The background of the folded velvet curtain painted in the wet-in-wet technique is a characteristic that is more usually associated with Nicholas Hilliard with whom Oliver learnt the art of limning. It is also seen in Oliver's work circa 1610 and can be observed in many of the portraits of Anne of Denmark to whom he was appointed limner in 1605 and later to Henry Frederick Prince of Wales (cf. above quoted exhibition catalogues, no. 171, 175, 176, 177, 183, 184).
The position of the hand on the heart indicates that the present miniature was no doubt intended as a love token.