(bapt Ormskirk, Lancs, 3 Feb 1593/4; d Chester, 1645). English painter. He was apprenticed to the Chester antiquary and painter Randle Holmes (1571–1655) from 1606/7 until 1616, when he became a freeman of the Chester Company of Painter-Stainers. His few surviving works are all portraits, although he is known also to have been a heraldic painter. He was itinerant: the first archival mention of him as an independent artist is in 1620, when he received 30s. for a portrait of Francis Clifford, 4th Earl of Cumberland (untraced), painted at Skipton Castle, N. Yorks. All his other paintings, covering a period of more than 20 years, come from houses within an area bounded by Shropshire to the south and Yorkshire to the north. His work is provincial, two-dimensional and naive in drawing, although the painting technique is more sophisticated, reminiscent of Cornelis Jonson van Ceulen. Souch’s masterpiece is the sombre and moving Sir Thomas Aston at the Death-bed of his Wife (1635; Manchester, C.A.G.). Although painted well after Anthony van Dyck’s arrival in England, this large painting (2.01*2.13 m) effectively marks the last unexpected and splendid flowering of the Elizabethan style. Souch’s two other paintings in public collections, George Puleston (London, Tate) and the Portrait of a Husband Aged 37 and his Wife (1640; Chester, Grosvenor Mus.), are in his more usual half-length format. Souch was possibly killed during the siege of Chester in the Civil War.

• Souch, John
  • England, §III, 3(i): Portraiture and subject painting, c 1620–c 1830