SIR HENRY WYAT
Louvre, Paris
Vol. I., Plate 89.
SIR THOMAS ELYOT
Drawing in black and coloured chalks
Windsor Castle
HIS EARLIER ENGLISH PORTRAITS
In addition to these undated portraits, there are several studies for paintings now lost which it is the custom, both from the style of drawing and the fashion of hair and dress, to attribute to this earlier period. The truly magnificent head of an unknown man at Chatsworth, and the almost equally fine drawing of Sir Thomas Elyot (Pl. [89]),[[768]] author of the “Boke called the Governour,” and friend of More, and that of his wife, Lady Elyot,[[769]] among the Windsor heads, have thus been ascribed to 1527-8; but in these three cases the draughtsmanship is so extraordinarily true and delicate, and at the same time so strong and so full of character in every touch, that one is inclined to place them some six or seven years later as work of the first years of Holbein’s second English period. The Chatsworth drawing[[770]] is outlined in black with the point of the brush on flesh-coloured paper, with a spot of red here and there. “It would be useless to dilate upon the qualities of this masterpiece,” says Mr. S. Arthur Strong, “in which Holbein seems to touch the highest point attainable by human faculty within the chosen limits. By the side of such work as this, Leonardo da Vinci himself would appear conventional, almost effeminate.”[[771]] This praise is by no means excessive, as the drawing is wonderful in its truth, its combination of delicacy and strength, and its beauty. There is a second head of an unknown man by Holbein at Chatsworth,[[772]] of a later date, and in no ways as fine as the earlier one. It is in black chalk with a wash of red, and it has been dashed in with rapid, vigorous strokes, though with little of the subtlety of the first.
With the exception of several doubtful examples, such as the Dr. John Stokesley, Bishop of London,[[773]] in Windsor Castle, which, though a work of high quality, has characteristic features in the painting which preclude its attribution to Holbein, the above-mentioned pictures constitute the tale of the painter’s achievement in England during his first visit, which lasted only some twenty months or so. During that time, however, he not only spent a couple of months or more over the decoration of the Greenwich Banqueting House, and made numerous studies for the big More Family Group, and carried that picture itself some way towards completion, but also painted portraits of Sir Thomas and Lady More, Archbishop Warham, Sir Henry and Lady Guldeford, Thomas and John Godsalve, Niklaus Kratzer, Sir Henry Wyat, and Sir Bryan Tuke, so that his output was a considerable one.
In addition to these, there is the portrait of Reskimer, and possibly others of Margaret Roper, Sir Thomas and Lady Elyot, and Sir Nicholas Carew,[[774]] while it is almost certain that he also painted one of Bishop Fisher, although the drawing for it is now the only record which remains. This list, which includes fourteen or more portraits, shows that Holbein, in spite of lack of official recognition from the King, received sufficient patronage from the More circle and the Court to keep him very busily and remuneratively occupied.