about 1645-1724Peter (Lawrence) Crosse

Son of Antony Crosse, a freeman of the Drapers’ Company, Peter Crosse was a miniature painter born in London. Despite his activity as both miniature painter and collector, little is known about his life. For a very long time his identity was confused due to the misreading of his monogram: the cursive letters’ PC’ intertwined sometimes they were read as ‘LC’, which led some to believe that his first name was Lawrence. His career seems to have spanned from around 1675 to 1724. In 1678 he was appointed Limner in Ordinary to the King, succeeding Nicholas Nixon.

Crosse’s miniatures are characterized by a slightly subdued palette, often set against plain backgrounds in brown, dull blue, or reddish tones, sometimes incorporating a fragment of sky or drapery. His figures retain a certain flatness associated with earlier miniaturists such as Hilliard, Peter Oliver, and Hoskins. He modelled faces using delicate gradations of red, blue, and green, applied through a fine dotting technique.

He was particularly skilled in rendering the elaborate curled wigs fashionable in his time, a feature that often helps identify his work. Over time, his style became softer, with darker backgrounds, blurred contours, and faces strongly lit from the front.