Of Johannes Corvus, the Fleming, and his portraits of Richard Foxe, Bishop of Winchester, and of Mary Tudor, sister of Henry VIII, the one undated, and the other of the year 1532, some account has been already given.[736] Little is known of this painter, or of Gerlach Fliccius or Flicke, who, like Holbein, was German, and appears to have settled in London towards the end of Henry VIII’s reign, where he died in 1558. Recent researches by Miss Mary Hervey[737] have, however, added considerably to our knowledge of this painter and his work. His will, recently discovered, which is dated 24th January 1558, and was proved by his widow on the 11th February following, shows that he was living in the parish of St. Giles without Cripplegate, and that he possessed lands and goods in Osnabrüch, of which place he was no doubt a native. In this document he calls himself “Drawer,” and gives his name as Garlick Flicke, and it was under the name of Garlick that he was generally known in this country. The Lumley inventory includes three portraits by him—a full-length, described as “The Statuary of Thomas first Lo: Darcy of Chiche, created by King Edw. 6. Ld Chamberlayne to the said K. Edw.: drawn by Garlicke,” and two small ones of “Queen Marye, drawne by Garlicke,” and “Thomas, the third Duke of Northfolke, drawne by Garlicke.” Unfortunately these three portraits have disappeared—the full-length of Lord Darcy in quite modern times. Until 1854 it was hanging in Irnham Hall, Lincolnshire, but in that year the house and its contents were sold, and the present whereabouts of the picture has so far not been traced. Miss Hervey gives a list of eight portraits which can be attributed with more or less certainty to Fliccius. In addition to the three from the Lumley Collection, there are three others in the collection of the Marquis of Lothian at Newbattle Abbey, Dalkeith, the portrait of Archbishop Cranmer in the National Portrait Gallery, and the small double portrait of the painter himself and his friend, Richard Strangeways. The three at Newbattle Abbey[738] are of great interest, though it is impossible to describe them in detail here. The finest, which is dated 1547, and is signed “Gerlacius Fliccūs Germanūs faciebat,” represents an unknown man of the age of forty, whom Miss Hervey tentatively suggests to be William, Lord Grey of Wilton, clad in a slit buff jerkin and a black velvet surcoat trimmed with fur. It is a portrait of considerable power, and though it has suffered from repainting still appears to have been the work of a man of more than ordinary artistic talents. The second portrait at Newbattle—of Sir Peter Carew—has many points in common with it, and was probably painted at about the same time. The portrait of Archbishop Cranmer in the National Portrait Gallery is stiffer in style than these, and suggests a more obvious attempt to follow the manner of Holbein, but though very carefully painted and with every appearance of truth of portraiture, lacks the vitality which stamps everything from the hand of the master. It is signed “Gerbicus Flicciis Germanus faciebat,” and though undated was, according to the sitter’s age, painted in 1545. The curious double portrait, on a small oak panel, of Flicke and his friend Strangeways or Strangwish, the gentleman privateer, known as the “Red Rover,” was painted in prison in 1554. The artist seems to have been mixed up in Wyat’s rebellion, and as a result he and his friend were imprisoned, but afterwards released. Over each head is painted a verse, that above Flicke’s in Latin, which, translated, runs: “Such in appearance was Gerlach Fliccius, what time he was a painter in the City of London. This portrait he painted from a mirror for his dear friends, that they might be able to remember him after his death.” The lines over Strangeways are in English:

The background is blue. The present ownership of this picture is unknown. The remaining picture, at Newbattle Abbey, is a small portrait of Jacques de Savoie, duc de Nemours, showing the head and shoulders only of a young man with fair hair and a very slight beard and moustache, in French dress, and wearing the Order of St. Michael. It betrays the influence of the French school, and is in style of marked difference to his other known works. It was identified in 1909 by M. Dimier, who discovered three crayon drawings taken from it, all of them bearing the title given above. The original picture is signed “G. Fliccus ft.,” and on the back is an old label with “Origl. Fliccus ft.” Miss Hervey suggests that it was painted on the Continent about 1555.[739]

Recent researches on the part of Mr. Lionel Cust have established the identity of another foreign painter of considerable skill, who was at work in England some years after Holbein’s death, but who hitherto has been known only under the initials H. E.[740] This monogram occurs on a number of pictures of important personages bearing dates from 1550 to 1568, the earliest of them being on a portrait at Longford Castle, formerly known as Sir Anthony Denny, but now recognised as Sir Thomas Wyndham. These portraits have usually been given to Lucas d’Heere,[741] of Ghent, although all that is known of that painter’s life, including the fact that he did not come to England before 1568, made the attribution of any one of them to him one of great difficulty. Mr. Cust, by means of certain entries in the Lumley inventory, has proved that the real author of them was a certain Jan Eeuwouts, of Antwerp, whose name became anglicised into Haunce or Hans Eworthe. Three of the Lumley portraits are described as the work of Eworthe—“Mr. Edw. Shelley slayne at Mustleborough fielde, drawen by Haunce Eworthe”; “Haward a Dutch Juellor, drawne for a Maisters prize by his brother, Haunce Eworthe”; and “Mary Duches of Northfolke, daughter to the last Earle of Arundell Fitzallan, doone by Haunce Eworthe,” the last one being in all probability the portrait now at Arundel Castle, which is signed H. E. in monogram. Several other portraits in the Lumley inventory, though no painter’s name is given, still exist, and bear this monogram, such as the small double portrait of Lord Darnley and his brother, Charles Stewart, at Windsor Castle; Lord Maltravers at Arundel Castle; Sir John Lutterel, dated 1550, at Dunster Castle; and Sir Thomas Wyndham, also dated 1550, at Longford Castle.[742] These portraits prove that Eworthe was much employed by Lord Lumley or his father-in-law, the last Earl of Arundel, at Nonsuch Palace. Mr. Cust has traced him as a resident alien in London in 1552 in the parish of St. Saviour’s, Southwark. He is described in the return as “John Ewottes, paynter,” and assessed at the high rate of eight guineas, and he employed a servant named John Mychell, who was assessed at eightpence. As “Jan Eeuwouts, schilder,” he was admitted a free master of the Guild of St. Luke in Antwerp in 1540. It is thus possible that he was a native of that city.[743]

The present writer ventures to suggest that Eworthe was also the author of a picture included in the inventory of the Duke of Buckingham’s pictures at York House in 1635. The entry is as follows: “Hans Evolls—A little head of Queen Mary.”[744] The spelling of most of the names in this inventory is largely phonetic, and evidently the work of some person with little knowledge of such matters, so that he may easily have turned Eworthe into Evolls.[745] The following statement of Walpole’s also suggests a possible connection with Eworthe: “Another picture of Edward VI was in the collection of Charles I, painted by Hans Hueet, of whom nothing else is known. It was sold for 20l. in the civil war.”[746]

It is impossible to mention more than the names of certain better-known foreigners who practised in England under Mary and Elizabeth, such as Mor, who came over in 1553, Joos van Cleve, who did so in 1554, and Lucas d’Heere. Of the few known native painters working in London in the years immediately following Holbein’s death the records are so scanty that little remains but their names, but, taking them as a body, they must have been men of very modest talent, and in portraiture, when they essayed it, merely feeble imitators either of Holbein or one of the other leading foreigners at Henry’s court. Among them were John Shute, painter and architect, and John Bettes, both of whom are described as miniature painters by Richard Haydock in his translation of Lomazzo on Painting (1598), and, apparently, as contemporaries of Nicholas Hilliard. “Limnings,” he says, “much used in former times in church-books, as also in drawing by the life in small models, of late years by some of our countrymen, as Shoote, Betts, &c., but brought to the rare perfection we now see by the most ingenious, painful, and skilful master, Nicholas Hilliard.”[747] Meres, in Palladis Tamia, Wits Treasury, the second part of his Wits Commonwealth, also published in 1598, in giving a list of the leading painters in England at that time, mentions “Thomas and John Bettes.” From these two entries it seems clear that Bettes was an Elizabethan miniature painter, and Vertue, who was of opinion that he learned from Hilliard, mentions a miniature by him of Holbein’s sitter, Sir John Godsalve, in which he was represented with his spear and shield, with the inscription “Captum in castris ad Boloniam 1540.”[748] There is, however, in the National Gallery a small portrait of Edmund Butts (No. 1496), a son of Sir William Butts, another of Holbein’s sitters, to which reference has been already made,[749] which is attributed to John Bettes, and bears the date 1545. If this attribution, based on a French inscription on the back of the panel, be correct, the date indicates that the painter was at work at a considerably earlier period than is to be inferred from the only two almost contemporary references to him, quoted above, which have been so far discovered, and that he may even have been personally acquainted with Holbein. The portrait in the National Gallery is a work of considerable merit, and possesses certain Holbeinesque characteristics. In any case, the date upon it makes it impossible, if painted by Bettes, that he could have been Hilliard’s pupil, as Vertue asserted. Little or nothing is known of his work, though, according to Dr. Williamson, there is a fine miniature of an unknown man by him in the Montagu House Collection, signed “J. B. 1580”;[750] and a second, of a somewhat earlier date, a portrait of Gaspard de Coligny, Admiral of France, apparently unsigned, in Lord Beauchamp’s possession at Madresfield Court.[751] Dr. Williamson also notes a quaint miniature of Edward VI as a baby in the Rijks Museum, Amsterdam, which in an old inventory of the Dutch royal possessions is attributed to Bettes.[752] Fox, in his Ecclesiastical History, states that John Bettes drew the vignettes for Hall’s Chronicle. Still less is known of Thomas Bettes, but there was a miniature in the Propert Collection of John Digby, Earl of Bristol, which was given to him.

Another painter, of whom little is known but his name, was Nicholas Lyzarde, who is generally considered to have been an Englishman, though Mr. Digby Wyatt speaks of him as Nicolo Lizardi.[753] He was employed about the Court during the last years of Henry VIII’s reign. Thus, in 1543-4 he was at the head of a band of painters engaged on work in connection with some revels at Hampton Court, for which he received higher wages than the others—“Wages to painters: Nichs Lezard 18d per diem”; and in 1544-5 he supplied various materials and properties for some other masque—“Paste work and painting, Nicholas Lizarde, painter, for gyldinge under garments for women, of white and blue sarcenet, with party gold and silver, 4 li.; 8 pastes for women, 20d.; 8 long heads for women, made of past gilded, with party gold and silver, 43s. 4d.” &c. He was afterwards in the regular employment of the Court throughout the reigns of Edward VI, Mary, and Elizabeth, being serjeant-painter to the last-named Queen, with a pension or salary of £10 a year. Nothing of his work remains that can be identified, but that he painted “subject” pictures is to be gathered from a New Year’s gift he presented to Queen Mary in 1556 of a “table painted with the Maundy,” while in 1558 his gift to Queen Elizabeth was “a table painted of the history of Assuerus,” for which he received a gilt cruse of some 8 oz. in weight. He died in April 1571, and at the time was living in the parish of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields, and left a family of five sons and four daughters.[754]

In the wider field of European art, also, it is impossible to point to any painter who was a pupil, or even a direct follower, of the master. Sandrart says that Christopher Amberger “followed the famous artist Holbein in his manner of painting, and especially in portraiture,” but modern criticism does not endorse this statement. In any case, his opportunities of studying Holbein’s works must have been few, though Woltmann considered that he certainly did so, and regarded him, if not as an actual pupil, yet as a real follower of the master.[755] It is not to be expected, indeed, that Holbein should have formed any definite school, though he must have influenced painting in Basel during his first and longest residence in that city; but, except for that period, his life was more or less a wandering one, and he never, during his short career, settled for a long enough time in any one place to have allowed him to gather any considerable body of pupils around him.[756]

The work of his imitators and copyists, such as they were, is to be found in the portraits scattered about the older country houses and mansions of England, where they are usually attributed to Holbein himself, often when the date upon them makes it impossible that he could have painted them. Among them are numerous old copies of still-existing portraits by him, which indicate the estimation in which his work was held for years after his death. For instance, in the fire which burnt down Knepp Castle, Sussex, in January 1904, a number of pictures were destroyed, including no less than eight attributed to Holbein. The titles of nearly all of them were familiar enough—Sir Henry and Lady Guldeford, Anne of Cleves, Thomas Cromwell, Sir Richard Rich, and Ægidius—indicating that they were most probably merely replicas or copies. It is true that Holbein occasionally painted a replica, but this was very rarely, and in most cases the portraits in question were the work of far less skilful men, and owed their existence to the desire of the descendants of Holbein’s original sitters to possess copies of the older family portraits.