Most of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century portraits in our collection depict people of high rank such as royalty or members of the nobility. We have few very early portraits of citizens of less elevated status such as this picture of the calligrapher Esther Kello (1570/1–1624). The artist is unknown and the portrait is rather primitive but it is a fascinating record of a highly talented and resourceful woman who worked hard against the odds to establish her career.
Esther Inglis was the daughter of Huguenot refugees who escaped religious persecution in France, eventually settling in Edinburgh. Her father, Nicholas Langlois, was a teacher who established a French school in the Scottish capital. Esther, the second of five children, learned the art of calligraphy from her mother, a talented scribe. In about 1596 Esther married Bartholomew Kello, a minor Government official, and in 1603 the couple moved south, first to London and then to Essex where her husband became the minister in the parish of Willingale Spain.
A large number of Esther Kello’s manuscripts have survived in collections across the world, including the National Library of Scotland. She made specimen writing books as well as manuscript versions of various secular and religious texts. In terms of her craft, Esther was not a great innovator but she was able to exploit a very wide variety of styles, from the most decorative to more austere scripts; her texts are sometimes tiny in scale with lines less than a millimetre in height. Most of her work carries dedications to royalty or the nobility and was presumably presented to these potential patrons in the hope of reward. Esther seems to have carefully cultivated her image as an outsider, both as a foreigner and a woman. A tiny self-portrait frequently appears in her manuscripts and, even after years of living in Britain, she continued to sign her work prominently using the French version of her maiden name, Esther Langlois.
This portrait is dated 1595 and it may have been made to celebrate her betrothal to Bartholomew Kello. The rather joyous motif of the intertwined carnation and the honeysuckle at the top left would be appropriate for a marriage portrait, and it is tempting to imagine that there was once a companion painting of her husband which is now lost. Esther wears a tall hat, a ruff and a white stomacher decorated with black floral embroidery, known as blackwork; she holds a small book, perhaps one of her own creations. Her features convey intelligence as well as a hint of determination and ambition. Sadly, her efforts were not accompanied by material wealth. The Kellos returned to Edinburgh in 1615 and, at her death in Leith in 1624, Esther is recorded as having substantial debts.
John Leighton
Published online 2016/17
This text was originally published in 100 Masterpieces: National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh (2015).