George Jamesone painted this portrait shortly after Thomas Hope became Lord Advocate of Scotland. He made his reputation in 1605 by defending six ministers who were being tried for declining to accept that the crown had authority over the church. Although he was a member of the Privy Council, which ordered the use of the new Prayer Book, Hope had strong Covenanting sympathies.
George Jamesone (Scottish, 1589 / 1590 - 1644)
Born in Aberdeen, the portrait painter George Jamesone was the son of a master-mason. He was apprenticed to the decorative painter, John Anderson of Edinburgh, in 1612. His earliest patrons were the merchants and academics of Aberdeen, but he soon became the painter to the nobility of the north east. From 1633 he was working in Edinburgh and painted a series of imaginary portraits of historical monarchs as decorations for the triumphal entry of Charles I. Jamesone was Scotland's first great native painter and was highly celebrated in his lifetime.
