The portrait of the Cornishman, Reskimer,[[757]] at Hampton Court, has been ascribed by most critics to Holbein’s first English period, and so is included in this chapter, although the exceptionally long beard, which reaches almost to his waist, and the hair, which, though not polled, is short enough to show the ears, would indicate a date after 1535. It has suffered somewhat in the course of time, but in its technique it resembles Holbein’s work at the beginning of his second English period, and so was probably painted at about that time. There is a fine drawing for it in the Windsor Collection,[[758]] which is inscribed, “Reskemeer a Cornish Gent.,” in which the hair and beard are carefully wrought. This study appears to be among the earlier drawings in the collection.
“The portrait,” says Mr. Law, “represents a youngish man, not more than twenty-eight, we should say, seen in a nearly complete profile, turned to the left, the light coming in from the right. He is dressed in a plain, dark-coloured coat or mantle; with the small white collar of his shirt showing, the two strings of which hang down untied. His two hands, which are drawn and painted with all Holbein’s strength and precision, are both seen, the knuckles of the left being turned frontwards to the spectator, and the palm of the right upwards, with the fingers just touching the end of his beard. He wears a flat black cap slantwise over the right side of his head. His hair is red, as is also his long peaked beard. The background is a bluish green, with a sprig of vine.” Some such branch of vine or fig frequently appears in the backgrounds of Holbein’s earlier portraits. It is on wood, or, possibly, according to Mr. Wornum,[[759]] on paper or parchment attached to oak, 1 ft. 6½ in. high by 1 ft. 1½ in. wide. The brand of Charles I—“C.R.” crowned—is on the back of the panel.
Nothing of its history is known, except that it was in Charles I’s collection, and is described in his catalogue, page 8, as follows: “A side-faced gentleman out of Cornwall, in his black cap, painted with a long peaked beard, holding both his hands before him; some parts of a landskip. Being less than life, upon a defaced cracked board, painted upon the wrong light. Done by Holbein, given to the King by the deceased Sir Rob. Killigrew, Vice-Chamberlain to the Queen’s Majesty.” Mr. Law suggests, no doubt correctly, that it was said to be “a gentleman out of Cornwall” in the catalogue on the authority of the inscription on the Windsor drawing.
The name is spelt in many ways in the records—Reskemeer, Reskimear, Rekymar, Reshemer, Reskemyr, Reskimer, and so on. The portrait is usually considered to represent John Reskimer, of Marthyn or Murthyn, though there is no authority for this except the fact that a John Reskimer was living at about this time. Among the various references to men of this family in the State Papers, Reskimers of more than one Christian name appear. A Mr. Reskemar is mentioned in 1527 as belonging to Wolsey’s household, and in 1532 the name of John Reskymer, son and heir of John Reskymer, occurs in connection with a grant of land in Cornwall.[[760]]
The John Reskemeer or Reskimer whose portrait this is said to be was the son of William Reskemeer, fourteenth in descent from the first of that name who settled in Cornwall, and Elizabeth, daughter of Sir John Arundel of Telverne. By his wife Catherine, daughter of John Trethurff, he had several children, his son William succeeding him;[[761]] though, according to a pencil note in the copy in the British Museum of John Chamberlaine’s “Imitations of Holbein’s Drawings,” he married Jane, one of the daughters of Robert, natural son of Henry, Lord Holland, the last Duke of Exeter. He was High Sheriff of Cornwall in 1557, and his seat, Marthyn, was one of the eight parks in that county in 1602.
There is a fine portrait in the Prado, Madrid, representing an elderly Englishman of extremely plain features and with an exceptionally large nose,[[762]] which Woltmann, who first drew attention to it, regarded as a genuine work of Holbein’s first English period. His clean-shaven face with its many heavy wrinkles is of a very ruddy brown colour. His small black cap has long ear-pieces, and he wears the customary dark cloak or overcoat, with a collar of black embroidered or watered silk, open at the top, and looped together with a cord, showing the white shirt below, cut straight without a collar of any kind. It is a half-length, almost full face, the head and eyes turned slightly to the left. He holds a rolled-up paper in his left hand. It bears the stamp of truth in every line of the rugged countenance. Modern criticism, however, refuses to accept it as a work from Holbein’s brush. Dr. Bode and other German writers consider it to be by the Master of the “Death of Mary.”
PORTRAIT OF SIR HENRY WYAT
A small portrait of undoubted genuineness, although badly over-painted, and belonging to the first English period, is the likeness of Sir Henry Wyat in the Louvre (Pl. [88]),[[763]] which for many years was known as a portrait of Sir Thomas More. According to Mr. Lionel Cust,[[764]] this panel is in all probability the same as the portrait of “Cavaglier Wyat,” painted in 1527, by Holbein, which was in the possession of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, and among those pictures which, after his widow’s death at Amsterdam in 1654, were disposed of by her son, Viscount Stafford, to M. Jabach of Cologne, from whom they were purchased by Colbert for the collection of Louis XIV, and so came into the Louvre. Several copies of it exist. There is an excellent replica in the National Gallery of Ireland[[765]] (No. 370), which was acquired at the sale of the Magniac Collection in 1892; while a copy of it belongs to Constance, Countess of Romney, with which goes a picture of Wyat’s famous cat, which picture, according to Sir Martin Conway,[[766]] may likewise represent an original by Holbein. A somewhat later, probably seventeenth-century, picture belonging to Lady Romney, is made up out of a combination of the two—master and cat—with a background of prison wall and window.
In the Louvre picture Sir Henry is represented at half-length, slightly turned to the right, wearing a black skull-cap over his long hair, and the customary overcoat with deep fur collar, and green under-sleeves; from his shoulders hangs a large heavy gold chain, to which a gold cross is attached, which he grasps with his right hand, and holds a folded paper in his left. He is clean-shaven, and has a large rounded nose. The wrinkled face, the small tremulous mouth, and the tired eyes with the sadness of their expression, produce a very lifelike effect of old age. The chain is put on with real gold, in a way which Holbein practised from time to time in England. Although it has suffered severely, it seems to be an undoubted example of the first English period. It is about 15½ in. high by 12 in. wide. Woltmann saw a copy of it in London in the Robinson Collection, probably the one now in Dublin, and he speaks both of it and of the one belonging to Lady Romney as of high artistic merit.[[767]] Sir Henry Wyat, of Allington Castle, Kent, who had served Henry VII, was appointed as a member of the Privy Council by Henry VIII on his accession to the throne. He died in 1537. Holbein probably became acquainted with him when at work on the Greenwich Banqueting House.
Vol. I., Plate 88.