Holbein’s arrival in England and his reception by Sir Thomas More—The More Family Group and the Basel study for it—The various copies of the picture at Nostell Priory, East Hendred, Burford Priory, and elsewhere—The Sotheby miniature—Studies for the heads in the Windsor Collection—The portrait of Sir Thomas More—Miniature of More in the late Mr. Pierpont Morgan’s Collection—Portrait of Lady More—Margaret Roper—Drawing of unknown lady in the Salting Collection—Portrait at Shere said to represent Margaret Roper.
THE date of Holbein’s arrival in England can be fixed with some certainty. The letter of introduction he carried from Erasmus to Peter Ægidius in Antwerp, as already pointed out, was dated 29th August 1526, and it must have been written on the eve of the painter’s departure from Basel. Travelling was slow in those days, and Holbein would not be in a position to afford to make the whole journey on horseback. As he carried letters from Erasmus, the latter may have helped him with his travelling expenses, but no doubt the greater part of the journey would be made by boat down the Rhine, and for the rest he would trudge on foot, the materials of his craft on his back.
There is no evidence to show that he made a stay of any length in Antwerp; nor any record of a meeting with Ægidius or Metsys, though such meetings must almost certainly have taken place, for the former would be likely to do everything in his power to oblige Erasmus. Woltmann suggests that he stayed in Antwerp for at least some weeks, in order to earn some money, while Mr. Davies thinks that he made a somewhat lengthy sojourn in the Netherlands before coming to England.[648] “One may take it almost for granted,” he says, “that a man of his sympathies, the fountain of whose art had already flowed down to him by Flemish channels, would not fail to use his opportunity for visiting the great Flemish primitives, the Van Eycks, Memlinc, Van der Weyden, Gerard David in their own homes. Ghent and Bruges lay at no great distance seaward, and whether he took ship at Flushing, or chose the longer land route and the shorter sea passage by Calais—an expensive method for one whose pockets were as empty as Holbein’s—he would, one feels sure, have made the pilgrimage to those two cities.”[649]
Dr. Waagen also believed that Holbein made a considerable delay in Antwerp, for the purpose of painting the portrait of Ægidius, now in Longford Castle, at that time considered to be from his hand; and he also held the theory that the “Laïs Corinthiaca” and the “Venus” were painted on the same occasion, seeing in them a Netherlandish influence. Mr. Davies, in a second passage, to which reference has been made,[650] asserts that Holbein “spent several months in or about Antwerp on his way to England in 1526.” He admits, however, that he is dealing with mere probabilities, and it is much more likely that Holbein would waste as little time as possible in reaching the country in which he hoped to improve his fortunes, and would tarry only a day or two in Antwerp, in order to make the acquaintance of Metsys; and that he then either took ship at that port, or, which is less probable, tramped on to Calais, the customary point of embarkation for England. He may thus have reached London easily by the beginning or middle of October 1526. It is, in any case, quite certain that he did not spend “several months in or about Antwerp.” This is proved both by a letter from Sir Thomas More to Erasmus, dated 18th December, and by the fact that the preliminary studies, or, at least, the general study for the grouping in the More family portrait, now in the Basel Gallery, must have been finished before the 7th February 1527.
Holbein, of course, would carry with him a letter of introduction from Erasmus to More, and very possibly to Warham, Fisher, and other correspondents of the philosopher then in England. There is no reason to throw doubt on Carel van Mander’s statement that he was received as a guest in Sir Thomas More’s hospitable house in Chelsea. Van Mander’s biography contains numerous inaccuracies, although he wrote only some sixty years after Holbein’s death; but in this instance he is probably correct. More, who was noted for his hospitality, would welcome to his home any friend sent to him by Erasmus, and would do all that he could to help a foreigner, who can have had little or no knowledge of the English language. Van Mander’s statement has been copied and amplified by later writers until the legend runs that Holbein spent the greater part of three years under More’s roof; but this is not at all likely to have happened. During the painting of the great family picture, or, in any case, while the preliminary studies were being made, and other single portraits of members of More’s household taken, Holbein, no doubt, remained as a guest at Chelsea, if only for the convenience of the several sitters, but that he stayed throughout the whole of his first English visit as More’s guest is doubtful. He would, naturally, wish for a studio and lodging of his own, however humble, where he would be free to do just as he liked. Whether he set up his easel in the village hard by his patron’s house, or in London itself, where he would find a number of compatriots, it is not now possible to say, though an item in the royal accounts in connection with the festivities at Greenwich in 1527[651] seems to indicate that he had settled in the city; while, on the other hand, nearly all the portraits painted by him at this time were of men who were among More’s most intimate personal friends, whom Holbein would be more likely to meet in Chelsea than in London.
More certainly did everything in his power to help the painter. He not only gave him commissions for single portraits of himself and his wife, and, possibly, of his favourite daughter, Margaret Roper, but also for the large family group already mentioned. It is to be supposed that Holbein had carried with him some specimens of his handiwork by which Sir Thomas could judge of his ability, and he would almost certainly have with him proofs of the “Dance of Death” woodcuts, in themselves more than sufficient testimony to the brilliance of his artistic powers. Sir Thomas must also have had earlier knowledge of his skill both as a portrait-painter and a book-illustrator, in the likenesses of Erasmus already sent to this country, and in the various books by Erasmus and others, including his own Utopia, issued by Froben and other printers of Basel, which Holbein had helped to decorate.
In a long letter to Erasmus, mentioned above,[652] dated 18th December, More gives a few words of praise and a promise of help to their common friend and protegé: “Your painter, dearest Erasmus, is a wonderful artist, but I fear he is not likely to find England so abundantly fertile as he had hoped; although I will do what I can to prevent his finding it quite barren.”[653] This letter, as already stated, is dated 1525 in the published letters of Erasmus, but the correct date is 1526, as first pointed out by Mr. F. M. Nichols, F.S.A.[654] It has been generally supposed that it was written after More had seen certain portraits of Erasmus sent over from Basel about 1524, and that his promise of help to the painter had reference to a projected visit to England on the part of Holbein. Mr. Nichols, however, proves conclusively that it was written after More had made his personal acquaintance. “The true date,” he says, “is shown not only by the allusion to Holbein, who was evidently in England at the time, but still more certainly by the literary work of Erasmus mentioned in it. The first part of the Hyperaspistes (the answer of Erasmus to the Servum Arbitrium of Luther), printed in the spring of 1526, and the Institution of Christian Marriage, printed in August of the same year, are both mentioned as already published, and the second part of Hyperaspistes as expected. This last book was published at the close of the same year, 1526, not much after the date of the letter as here corrected.” More, therefore, wrote to Erasmus in praise of Holbein after he had received practical proof, in the shape of his studies for the Family Group, of what the latter was capable in the way of portraiture.
The earliest work undertaken by the artist was the painting of this group of his host’s family, and the several individual portraits of certain members of the Chelsea household, of which the first would be undoubtedly that of his new patron.
The inscriptions on the study for the Family Group, now in the Basel Gallery, prove conclusively that the beautiful sketch of the general arrangement of the picture was finished, and possibly the picture itself begun, before 7th February 1527, thus indicating that Holbein must have started upon it with little delay. This fact is made clear through the researches of Mr. Nichols, included in a second and earlier paper read before the Society of Antiquaries in 1897,[655] dealing with the correct birth-year of Sir Thomas More. It is impossible to give here even a short summary of the evidence which he brings forward, evidence which proves that More was born on 7th February 1477, a year earlier than the date until then supposed to be the correct one. He then proceeds to show the bearing of this new year-date upon the Basel sketch. The sketch has the name and age of the persons represented in it written against each figure, and it is important to observe that there is a strong probability that these inscriptions were written or dictated by More himself. They are correctly written in Latin, while the painter’s notes on the same drawing are in German; and, as Mr. Nichols says, the information, including on the one hand the age of More’s venerable father, and on the other that of his domestic fool, could scarcely have been furnished by any one but More himself. Woltmann recognises the handwriting as undoubtedly that of More from its remarkable resemblance to the address on the letter held in the hand of Peter Ægidius in the Longford Castle portrait, which More declared was copied quite as closely as he could have copied it himself.
In the Basel sketch he has written above his own portrait, Thomas Morus anno 50—that is, anno quinquagesimo, “in his fiftieth year”—and, according to the corrected birth-date, Sir Thomas was in his fiftieth year from 7th February 1526 to 7th February 1527, which proves that the big picture had been completely planned out, and probably well advanced, before the latter date. In support of this contention, it will be found that not only the age of More himself, but that of other members of his family where they can be verified, point to the same date. Thus, Erasmus, who prided himself on his remarkable memory for the ages of his friends, says that John More, Sir Thomas’s only son, was just about thirteen in the summer of 1521, so that he would be in his nineteenth year in the autumn and winter of 1526, which is the age attributed to him on the sketch; while the dates of the birth and death of John More’s wife, Anne Cresacre, are known, and tally with the “anno 15” on the same drawing. More’s eldest child, Margaret Roper, is described as in her twenty-second year, and though the precise date of her birth is not known, the marriage of her parents took place in the twentieth year of Henry VII (21st August 1504-21st August 1505), which is consistent with her birth at any time between the summer of 1505 and the 7th February 1506, and therefore with her being in her twenty-second year at the date attributed to the sketch. It appears, therefore, that the evidence of all these inscriptions either confirms that date or is not inconsistent with it.
This proves that the Family Group was the first work undertaken by Holbein in England, and that in the intervals of painting the larger picture he was engaged upon a single portrait of Sir Thomas More and upon others of certain of the latter’s friends.
Unfortunately, the picture itself, if ever completed by Holbein, has disappeared. “For nothing,” says Walpole, “has Holbein’s name been oftener mentioned than for the picture of Sir Thomas More’s family. Yet of six pieces extant on this subject, the two smaller are certainly copies, the three larger probably not painted by Holbein, and the sixth, though an original picture, most likely not of Sir Thomas and his family.”[656]
The Basel sketch (No. 345)[657] (Pl. 74), upon which the various pictures still in existence are based, affords the most faithful record we possess of the great work itself, now lost, or buried under the handiwork of some inferior painter. It represents a large apartment with a group of ten persons, with two smaller figures seen through an open door in a room at the back. Sir Thomas More is seated in the centre of the group, dressed in long robes, his hands concealed in a muff. In attire, attitude, and expression the sketch agrees very closely with the portrait of More in the possession of Mr. Edward Huth. On his right hand, to the spectator’s left, is seated his old father, Sir John More, a judge of the King’s Bench (anno 76), looking straight out of the picture. By Sir John’s right side stands Margaret Gigs (anno 22), a relative of the family, afterwards married to Dr. John Clement. She has a book in her left hand, to which she points with her right, as though emphasizing a passage she is reading to the old man, towards whom she stoops. In front of her, and still further to the spectator’s left, the outside member of the group, stands Elizabeth Dancey (anno 21), More’s second daughter, with a book under her arm, drawing on her glove.
On the opposite side, on the spectator’s right, in the foreground, is a group of three, which includes More’s second wife, Alice Middleton (anno 54), on the extreme right, kneeling on a prie-dieu, with a chained monkey by her side jumping up against her dress; Margaret Roper (anno 22), More’s eldest and favourite daughter, seated on the ground on a low stool in front of her stepmother, an open book held in her lap, gazing in front of her, as though lost in thought over the volume she has been reading; and Cecilia Heron (anno 20), the youngest girl, seated behind, and partly concealed by her sister, with a book and rosary in her hand, and her head turned as though speaking to Lady More. In the centre, behind Sir Thomas, stand, on the right, his only son, John More (anno 19), looking down, absorbed in a book, and on the left, Anne Cresacre, his betrothed, a girl in her fifteenth year. The group is completed by the bluff figure of Henry Patenson, More’s jester, who stands to the right of More’s son, with arms akimbo in the favourite fashion of Henry VIII. Over his shoulder, through a doorway, with a kind of porch of open woodwork which projects into the apartment, are seen the heads of the two small figures mentioned above. The room in which the group is placed is probably the dining-hall. On the left there is a sideboard reaching to the ceiling, with a flower-vase, tankards, and silver plate. On the sill of a window on the opposite side of the room there are a jug, a candlestick, and some books. The wall at the back in the centre is covered with a curtain, in front of which a clock with weights is hanging, and a violin near it.
STUDY FOR THE MORE FAMILY GROUP
Drawing in Indian ink, with corrections and inscriptions in brown
Basel Gallery
The whole arrangement is of a somewhat formal and stately character, and both in the attitudes and occupations of the figures indicates a house of learning; even in the foreground books are scattered all over the floor. This masterly sketch, small as it is, is full of character. Each figure has marked individuality, and Holbein, with a few slight touches of his pencil, has in every case given a most truthful likeness, as may be proved by comparison with the larger studies of seven of the heads now in the Windsor Collection. From this brilliant study it is quite possible to gain a very adequate idea of how splendid the finished picture must have been, if, indeed, Holbein ever completed it. Whether the Basel drawing was merely Holbein’s first arrangement of the grouping, hastily done, or a drawing made at More’s request from the outlined design on the canvas for the purpose of sending it to Erasmus, is uncertain; but, in any case, the portraiture of all the heads, which are only sketched in a few lines, is complete and striking, and every touch stamps it as the work of one who was a master before he had reached his thirtieth year.
There are various copies of this great family picture in England, mostly of late origin and showing numerous differences. The only one which has any real claim to be considered the original work is the large canvas belonging to Lord St. Oswald at Nostell Priory, near Wakefield, which has been for many years in the possession of the Winn family (Pl. 75).[658] Most writers have identified it with the picture mentioned by Carel van Mander, whose book was first published in 1604, as seen by him in London in the possession of Andries de Loo, who had collected a number of Holbein’s works. “This lover of art,” he says, “had a large canvas, painted in water-colours, on which was depicted, as large as life, from head to foot, the learned and famous Thomas Morus, with his wife, sons, and daughters, all magnificently arrayed, a piece worthy to be seen and highly extolled.” On De Loo’s death, he continues, it was purchased by one of More’s grandsons, who was also named More. According to the family history, however, the buyer was the son of Margaret Roper, of Well Hall, Eltham, near Blackheath, where it still remained in 1731, when it was carefully described by the Rev. J. Lewis. It eventually passed by marriage to Sir Rowland Winn, of Nostell Priory, the ancestor of the present owner. Van Mander, it will be noted, says that this picture was in water-colours, or tempera, on canvas, which, if true, seems to indicate that it was not the work now at Nostell Priory, though repeated repairing and varnishing may have rendered the method of its painting uncertain to decide. Van Mander’s account of Holbein’s career is by no means free from inaccuracies, but the evidence seems to point to the fact that his history of the picture is substantially correct.[659]
There are considerable but, with two exceptions, not very important differences between the Nostell Priory picture and the Basel sketch. The latter is seen at once to be a first study for the grouping of the former, to which the artist adhered closely in almost all points. In the first place, it is interesting to note that the only two alterations suggested on the sketch itself, in Holbein’s own handwriting—“Dise soll sitzen” (she is to be sitting), placed against Lady More, and “Klafikordi vnd ander Sithespill vf dem bank” (harpsichords and other instruments on a shelf), to the left on the wall at the back, close by the cupboard or sideboard, where only a violin is hanging in the sketch—have both been carried out in the completed picture, though in the end the painter put the instruments on the sideboard in place of the silver plate, instead of on a shelf.
The two chief points in which the finished picture deviates from the sketch are the change in the positions of Elizabeth Dancey and Margaret Gigs, and the introduction of More’s “famulus,” John Heresius or Harris, who stands in the doorway at the back, with a roll of parchment in his hands, while beyond him, in the farther room, is a man standing at a large bay-window, holding a book which he is reading. The positions of Elizabeth Dancey and Margaret Gigs have been reversed. The former now stands next to Sir John, while the latter has taken her place on the extreme left, and, instead of stooping, stands upright, looking in front of her, but with her right hand still pointing to the open book in her left. Her head-dress is less elaborate than in the Basel sketch, and follows closely the plain white hood she is shown as wearing in the beautiful study at Windsor, erroneously inscribed “Mother Jak.” Two dogs are also introduced—a “cur-dog” at the feet of Sir John, and a “Bologna shock” at the feet of Sir Thomas, to quote from Mr. Lewis.[660] The various accessories in the room have also been to some extent changed, both on the sideboard and on the window-sill on the right. The titles of the books are given in most cases. Thus Margaret Roper holds open Seneca’s Œdipus at the chorus in Act iv., Elizabeth Dancey has Seneca’s Epistles under her arm, while Boetius de Consolatione Philosophiæ is on the sideboard.
THE MORE FAMILY GROUP
Lord St. Oswald’s collection
Nostell Priory
The critics are by no means agreed as to the merits of this picture. Dr. Waagen came to the conclusion that it was nothing more than an old copy, yet he dated it as about 1530 on technical grounds, due to the redness of the flesh tints, which he regarded as a characteristic of Holbein’s painting at that period—a strange conclusion to reach after giving it as his opinion that it was only a copy. Passavant, Vertue, and Walpole considered that it was made up by some inferior painter from Holbein’s separate studies of the heads. “As the portraits of the family,” says Walpole, “in separate pieces,[661] were already drawn by Holbein, the injudicious journeyman stuck them in as he found them, and never varied the lights, which were disposed, as it was indifferent in single heads, some from the right, some from the left, but which make a ridiculous contradiction when transported into one piece.”[662] Wornum’s opinion was that “the picture is without question unequal in its parts, some portions certainly being unworthy of Holbein; others, though much better, still bear no trace of the great master’s hand; the want of finish, too, is in parts apparent. The dogs are very bad, especially the foremost one; notwithstanding all this, however, there may be a genuine Holbein groundwork beneath.”[663] Woltmann, who saw it when it was in the National Portrait Exhibition of 1866, agreed with Waagen that it was only a good old copy. “Still this large picture is in a high degree interesting. Though the hand that copied it betrays, indeed, an able but in nowise clever painter, though the coldness of the execution is apparent in the unattractive accessories, still it shows us, to a certain extent, with what careful and delicate study the original picture had been executed.”[664]
The late Mr. F. G. Stephens examined the picture very carefully in 1880, and embodied the result of his study in one of his series of articles on “The Private Collections of England,” published in the Athenæum.[665] He came to the conclusion that certain portions were undoubtedly from the brush of Holbein, but that upon the greater part of the canvas he had merely sketched or pounced in the design, which had then been finished by some other painter not skilled enough to follow up with any success the lines laid down by the greater master, who for some unknown reason had abandoned the completion of the work. At the same time he was of opinion that even the parts which he attributed to Holbein by no means remained in the state in which he left them. His final conclusion was that Holbein left the canvas with only one head, that of Sir Thomas More, nearly finished; certain other heads—of Judge More, and the group of three on the right, Margaret Roper, Cecilia Heron, and Lady More—far advanced in execution, and one or two others in the background carried only a little further than the designing stage. Beyond this Holbein did not go; the remainder was left in outline, subject to correction to be made as the work proceeded. The man engaged to complete the picture covered the canvas as well as he could, but failed to retain any of the beauty of Holbein’s original design, or to introduce the generalising and systematic light and shade with which Holbein would have brought each part into harmony, or even to transfer to the canvas the animated portraiture and other high qualities of the cartoons which were available for that purpose. Most of the figures are of extreme disproportion, heads being too large for the bodies, and bodies too large for the legs, while the actions are awkward, and many of the faces lack animation and intelligence. The dogs are so bad that Mr. Stephens was of opinion that they were added even later by a third and still less skilful painter. On the other hand, he regarded the head of More as “a marvellous rendering of insight into human character, reproducing with extreme subtlety the utmost energy of thoughtfulness as marked on a visage where a far-seeing, vigorous soul has, so to say, written itself in every line and feature, and manifested itself in those penetrative yet meditating eyes, those fine thin lips, and affected the fine reserve of every lineament.”
This solution is possibly the correct one. All the other versions of the picture in existence are based on the Nostell Priory example. The Basel sketch was not available for the purpose, having been sent to Erasmus, and it is far from likely that all these works were copied or adapted from some original painting by Holbein now lost. At the death of Sir Thomas More much of his property was seized by the Crown, but even if such a picture were taken from the family, it does not follow that it would be destroyed. Thus there is every probability that the version seen by Van Mander in the collection of De Loo was the original picture, and that it was the one now in Nostell Priory. The most natural supposition is that Holbein was unable to finish it through want of time. He was back in Basel not later than the summer of 1528, as on the 29th August of that year, exactly two years from the date of Erasmus’ letter to Ægidius, he purchased a house in that city. As a citizen of Basel he must have obtained leave of absence before starting for England, and such leave would probably be for two years only, with penalties attached to it if he failed to return in time. His stay in England cannot have lasted much more than eighteen months, and during that period he was very busily occupied. As already shown, the Basel sketch for the big picture must have been made before 7th February 1527, on which day More was fifty years old. Curiously enough, on the day following, 8th February, Holbein started upon an important work of decoration, described below,[666] which occupied his entire time from that date until early in April, and for which he received payment from the royal purse. During the remainder of his first English visit he was engaged upon a number of portraits, including those of Sir Thomas More, Lady More, Archbishop Warham, Sir Henry Guldeford and his wife, the Godsalves, Kratzer, and possibly one or two others, such as Fisher, Reskimer, and Bryan Tuke, while in the intervals between these commissions he was, no doubt, busily at work upon the heads of the Family Group. His recall to Basel may have been peremptory, and so have forced him to leave in a hurry. In any case, he must have parted on good terms with More, for he was entrusted with the Basel sketch for delivery to Erasmus as a present from the author of the Utopia. Very possibly he promised to come back in order to finish the picture, but when a year or two had passed by without sign of his return, Sir Thomas, having given up all hope of seeing him again, may have decided to get it finished by some other painter. When the Nostell Priory picture was carefully cleaned some thirty-five years ago, it was found to be dated 1530, a date which well agrees with this theory. The same date, 1530, is on the Basel sketch, but it is below the drawing and by a later hand, and may have been added by some one who had knowledge of the date on one or other of the versions of the picture in England, or from the supposition that More was fifty in that year. The sketch was badly engraved by Nicolas Cochin in the Tabellæ Selectæ of Caroline Patin, published in 1691, and on this engraving no date is given. Von Mechel engraved it in 1794 in his œuvres de Jean Holbein, with the date 1530, so that it was added to the drawing between these two dates. Von Mechel gives both a facsimile of the original sketch and an engraving which he inscribes “Ex tabula Joh. Holbenii in Anglia adservata”; but none of the alterations which Holbein, according to his written notes on the sketch, proposed to carry out in the finished picture, are shown in this engraving, which proves that it was not copied from any original painting. Dr. Woltmann discovered Mechel’s model in a sepia drawing in the Gothic House at Wörlitz, which is evidently a copy of the original Basel design, executed long after Holbein’s time, and bearing some written notices in Lavater’s hand.[667]
A careful description is given by Mr. Wornum[668] of the various versions of the picture still in existence, all of which are based on the Nostell Priory example. Two of them were originally of the same size as the latter, which is 8 ft. 4 in. high by 11 ft. 8 in. wide. One of these in Walpole’s time was at Barnborough in Yorkshire, the seat of the Cresacres, and in 1867 in the possession of Mr. Charles John Eyston of East Hendred, Berkshire; and the other, a similar work, was formerly at Heron in Essex, the seat of Sir John Tyrrell, and afterwards in the collection of Lord Petre at Thorndon, near Brentford.
The East Hendred version measures 7 ft. 8 in. high by 9 ft. 9½ in. wide. At some time or other it had suffered from damage or decay on the right-hand side, and has been cut down to fit a panel, so that the figure of Lady More and her monkey and the more advanced of the two dogs, together with the window and the vase of flowers, have disappeared. With the exception of these changes and a few other unskilful repairs, this picture is in the main identical with the one at Nostell Priory, though very inferior to it. The Thorndon picture is also on canvas, and is 8 ft. 3 in. high by 11 ft. 2 in. wide. It is in a better state than the East Hendred example, and is copied from the same source, with slight changes. There is only one dog, Lady More is seated in a large scarlet arm-chair, and there are slight differences in the minor details, while Sir Thomas is shown with a moustache. Both these pictures are coarsely painted, and have little but an historical interest.[669] Wornum also describes a picture on canvas, 4 ft. 7 in. by 3 ft. 9 in., of Sir Thomas and his father, the latter in his scarlet robes, at Hutton Hall,[670] which was lent to the Tudor Exhibition, 1890 (No. 150), by Sir Henry Vane, Bt., and is apparently copied from the central portion of the Nostell Priory canvas, with the addition of a coat of arms, and two original inscriptions over the heads, and the date 1530. Sir Thomas’s age is given as 50 (Ætatis 50), but Sir John’s as 77, instead of “Anno 76” as in the sketch. Otherwise, in all these pictures, the ages of the sitters agree with the sketch, though the latter was done in 1527 and the former in 1530. This may be perhaps explained by the fact that Sir Thomas wished the ages to be kept as they were at the time when the studies were made, rather than when the picture was completed by another hand.
One other version of importance was in Walpole’s day at Burford Priory, Oxfordshire, the seat of William Lenthall, the Speaker (Pl. 76 ),[671] who purchased the estate from Viscount Falkland, together with the pictures in the house. This version of the Group, before the Speaker owned it, had been in the possession of the Mores, at Gubbins, in Hertfordshire. By what means it passed into the hands of Lenthall, says Walpole, is uncertain. He is said to have purchased a number of pictures from the royal collections at Whitehall and Hampton Court, but the More Family Group did not come from that source, nor was it acquired from Viscount Falkland, for, according to Dallaway (note to Walpole, vol. i. p. 91), it was described by Aubrey in 1670 when in Lenthall’s earlier home at Besselsleigh, Berks, who says that it had an inscription in golden letters of about sixty lines. It was bought in at the Lenthall sale at Christie’s in 1808 for one thousand guineas. It reappeared in the saleroom in 1833, when it fetched only one hundred guineas, and came into the possession of the Strickland family of Cokethorpe Park, Ducklington, Oxfordshire, and, later on, passed from them by marriage to the Cottrell-Dormer family. A few years ago it was under consideration by the Trustees of the National Portrait Gallery, but was not purchased, and, finally, it made a third appearance at Christie’s on 26th February 1910, when it was acquired by Sir Hugh P. Lane for nine hundred and fifty guineas. It measures 7 ft. 6 in. high by 11 ft. wide, and is dated 1593.[672] It contains eleven figures, and is made up from the original composition and portraits of later members of the family. Seven of the figures of Holbein’s group have been pushed to the spectator’s left, the ones omitted being Lady More, Margaret Gigs, Patenson, and the secretary, Harris. Elizabeth Dancey has been moved to the centre, behind and between her two seated sisters. The right side of the picture contains a group of four people of a later generation, the Chancellor’s grandson, Thomas More, and his wife, Maria Scrope, and their two sons, the elder of whom was the Thomas More who wrote the life of his great-grandfather. In the background there is a sideboard on the left, as in the Basel sketch, with two vases of flowers, and musical instruments, and the hanging clock is shown in its original position in the centre; but on the left the framed portrait of a lady has been introduced. In addition, coats of arms have been painted above seven of the heads without regard to the background itself. In an account of the Priory and its contents, communicated to the Gentleman’s Magazine for August 1799 (vol. lxix. pt. 2, p. 644), by an anonymous correspondent, who describes the big picture in some detail, the portrait hanging on the wall is said to represent the wife of Sir John More. There is a large miniature painting of the picture, which was in the Tudor Exhibition, 1890 (No. 1087),[673] lent by Major-General F. E. Sotheby, and attributed to Peter Oliver, as it was by Walpole, who says: “The painter of this exquisite little piece is unknown, but probably was Peter Oliver.”[674] The picture and the miniature do not agree, however, in all the details. The latter includes twelve figures, for Patenson is introduced in the background peeping through a curtain in the centre. Only two coats of arms are shown, over the heads of Sir Thomas More and his father, and on the right-hand side, behind the later group of portraits, in place of the wall with the lady’s portrait there is an open archway through which is seen the Mores’ walled garden at Chelsea and a distant view of London. According to the Dictionary of National Biography, the large picture was the work of Rowland Lockey, who was working about 1590-1610. He was a pupil of Nicholas Hilliard, and was extolled by Richard Haydock (1598) and Francis Meres (1598) as among the eminent artists then living in England. It is stated in Nichol’s History of Leicestershire[675] that he painted “a neat piece in oil, containing in one table the picture of Sir John More, a judge of the King’s Bench, temp. Henry VIII, and of his wife, and of Sir Thomas More, lord chancellor, his son and his wife, and of all the lineal heirs male descended from them, together with each man’s wife unto that present year.” The expression “neat,” however, would apply more aptly to the large miniature group, and it is very possible that he was the author of it.
THE MORE FAMILY GROUP
The Version formerly at Burford Priory. Now in the possession of Messrs. Parkenthorpe.
There are separate studies for the heads of seven of the sitters in the family picture among the Holbein drawings in Windsor Castle. Sir John More,[676] Sir Thomas, his son John,[677] his daughters Elizabeth[678] and Cecilia (Pl. 77),[679] Anne Cresacre,[680] and Margaret Clement.[681] These are all larger than the majority of the sketches in the collection, and on white unprimed paper. There are two drawings of Sir Thomas (Pl. 78),[682] which, although the face is taken from the same point of view, are not replicas, but distinctly separate studies; the pose is slightly different, and the hair quite unlike, and it may perhaps be conjectured that one of them is the study made for the Group, and the other a later study made shortly before the artist left England.
In addition to the family picture, Holbein painted separate portraits of Sir Thomas, Lady More, and, possibly, Margaret Roper. The portrait of More is the well-known one belonging to Mr. Edward Huth,[683] which has been frequently exhibited, most recently at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1909 (No. 53). Before it came into the possession of the Huth family it was in the collection of an Irish nobleman, from whom it was acquired—in payment for a picture-cleaning bill, so it is said—by Farrer, the picture-dealer, who sold it to Mr. Henry Huth for £1200. It was probably the first work painted by Holbein after his arrival in England, and finished early in 1527. It is based on the head in the Windsor Collection, and the position corresponds with the figure in the Basel sketch. It is a half-length, seated, three-quarters to the spectator’s right, with dark hair, and clean-shaven, but the grey of the moustache and beard indicated. He is dressed in black cap, black gown lined with brown fur, with deep fur collar, and a golden collar of SS. with portcullis clasps and Tudor rose pendant. His right elbow rests on a table to the left, and he holds a folded paper in both hands. The background consists of a green curtain with a gold fringe, looped back by a gold cord. The date “MDXXVII” is inscribed on the edge of the table.
This noble representation of a noble man is one of the finest portraits painted by Holbein in this country. It has suffered somewhat in the course of time, but still remains a wonderful study of character, penetrating in its insight. The nobility of More’s nature, the strength of his will, the gentleness of his disposition when not roused to just anger, the firmness of the finely-cut lips, and the penetrating glance of his bright eyes, have been mirrored by Holbein as though in a glass. Both the statesman and the scholar stand revealed with that searching power of seizing the essentials of a man’s nature which is one of the greatest qualities of Holbein’s art.
CECILIA HERON
Drawing in black and coloured chalks
Windsor Castle
SIR THOMAS MORE
Drawing in black and coloured chalks
Windsor Castle
A portrait of Sir Thomas was in the Orleans Gallery in 1727, and a second was in the possession of Lord Lumley in 1590, and was sold from Lumley Castle in 1785, to Mr. Hay, of Savile Row.[684] The latter was probably the one now belonging to Mr. Huth, and is the original from which so many copies have been made.[685] The panel on which it is painted measures 29 in. by 23½ in. There are also a variety of portraits scattered about the European museums to which the name of Sir Thomas More has been attached erroneously. The small portrait by Holbein of Sir Henry Wyat, father of Sir Thomas Wyat, in the Louvre, was long regarded as a likeness of More, and is still so described in the official catalogue.[686] There is another small panel, in the Brussels Museum (No. 641), to which the names of Holbein and More were attached on the frame-label until quite recently, although both ascriptions are absurd. It represents a bearded man with one hand thrust within the folds of his cloak, and a small book held open with the fingers of the other, and a small dog on the table in front of him. It was recognised as the work of some second-rate French artist more than fifty years ago, and bears not the slightest resemblance to Holbein’s style.[687] M. A. J. Wauters suggests that it is the work of Nicolas Denisot (1515-1559), a French poet and painter of modest capacities, who was in England for three years as French tutor to the three daughters of the Protector Somerset. Under his guidance these young ladies wrote Latin elegies to Margaret of Navarre, which were published under his editorship. A portrait of Margaret, dated 1544, is attributed by M. Bouchot to Denisot. More recently this work has been attributed to Corneille de Lyon, and is said to be a portrait of Henry Patenson. There is certainly a slight likeness between it and the head of Patenson in the Basel study for the More Family Group.