At the time of Holbein’s arrival in London, in the winter of 1526-1527, the leading English artist was John Browne, who was serjeant-painter to the King, an office he held for more than twenty years. He was appointed to the post on the 20th December 1511, in the third year of Henry’s reign, with an allowance of twopence a day out of the issues of the lordship of Whitley, in Surrey, and four ells of cloth at Christmas, annually, of the value of 6s. 8d. an ell, from the keeper of the great wardrobe, for his livery.[[531]]
JOHN BROWNE, SERJEANT-PAINTER
On the 24th September 1511 he received the balance of his bill for painting the streamers, banners, flags, and staves belonging to the King’s ship, The Mary and John, amounting to £16, 14s. 8d., and on the 17th December in the same year, £142, 4s. 6d. for painting and staining banners for The Mary Rose and The Peter Pounde Garnarde (Pomegranate).[[532]] Browne occasionally employed the services of Vincent Volpe, an Italian, for this banner-painting, and also from time to time supplied the materials for the royal revels. Thus, for the jousts on the 1st June 1512, “2,100 of party gold” for surcoats was bought from him for £2, 6s., and in the following year he received 10d. for the hire of sails “to shadow the percloos for the pageant.”[[533]] In June 1513 he received £4, 8s. 8d. from the royal purse for painting “divers of the Pope’s arms in divers colours,” and on the 10th April in the following year he rendered an account for work done on the King’s royal ship, the Great Harry or Henry Grace à Dieu, which included the supply of flags, banners, and streamers, two of them with crosses of St. George, and painting sixty staves in the King’s colours in oil at 6d. apiece.[[534]]
Browne was among those employed upon the temporary buildings at Guisnes, which included a banqueting house and a chapel, and lodgings for Henry and his Queen and the members of the English and French Courts, erected for the purpose of Henry’s state visit to France, and his meeting with Francis, known as the Field of the Cloth of Gold. Sir Nicholas Vaux wrote to Wolsey that they would be able to finish the square court by the last day of May, provided John Rastell, Clement Urmeston, and John Browne, the King’s painter, “do make and garnish all the roses—a marvellous great charge, for the roses be large and stately.”[[535]] Later on complaint is made from the same correspondent, that Browne, who has to gild the roofs, has not yet reached Calais.[[536]] For this work he received two payments of £66, 13s. 4d., and £333, 6s. 8d. For the masking at New Hall on the 19th February 1520, he was paid £19, 13s. 4d. for the beating and putting on the scales of gold and silver on the garments and bonnets of seven children, one in red, powdered with gold suns and clouds; the second in yellow, powdered with moons and clouds; the third in blue, powdered with drops of silver; the fourth powdered with gold primroses; the fifth with silver honeysuckles; the sixth with gold stars, and the seventh with silver snowflakes.[[537]]
By right of his office of serjeant-painter he had the provision of coats for the heralds. Thus, in 1520 he received 40s. for a tabard of sarcenet painted for Nottingham pursuivant.[[538]] In 1523 he rendered an account of “parcellis of stuff” made for the “high and myghty prynce Charlis duke of Suffolke, then beyng a poynttyd to be lyffetenant generall of Kyngis royall armye in to the partyes of France.” The items included a standard wrought with fine gold and silver on double sarcenet fringed with silk (£3), banners with the Duke’s arms, a coat of arms wrought with fine gold and silks and in oil on double sarcenet for his herald, and escutcheons in metal on paper royal, and others in colour, and on buckram, each with his arms, and so on, the total bill amounting to £26, 3s.[[539]] In 1524, for the revels at Greenwich, in which a castle was assaulted in the tilt-yard, he provided the painted cloths of which the sham buildings were made—“iiij pessys of clothe payntyng of Antuyke, wherewith the Kastell was envenyd,” and for various banners and coats of arms, £4, 10s.[[540]] For revels held on the 10th November 1527, Browne supplied all the materials, including paints, glue, scissors, gold-foil, &c., to the amount of £21, 6s. 0½d., which were used for making trees, bushes, branches, roses, rosemary, hawthorn, mulberries, panes of gold, “flosynge of stars,” &c., for a “place of plesyer” erected under the superintendence of Richard Gibson at Greenwich. The masque was a theological one, in which Luther and his wife appeared, as well as the Apostles, Religion, Heresy, and similar characters.[[541]] These various details, which could be multiplied, are sufficient to indicate the kind of work upon which the King’s serjeant-painter was usually engaged; and all the other English painters were men of a similar stamp—decorators, scene-painters of a kind, but rarely, if ever, painters of a panel picture.
ANDREW WRIGHT, SERJEANT-PAINTER
Browne prospered in his calling, and on May 7, 1522, was elected an Alderman of London for the Ward of Farringdon Without. At first he was unwilling to accept office, and was committed to ward for refusal, but afterwards complied, and was appointed one of the Aldermen to the Haberdashers’ Company. In the following year, on July 25th, he was translated to the Ward of Farringdon Within. His service, however, always appears to have been an unwilling one, and in 1525, before he had served the office of Sheriff or Mayor, he was on his own request discharged from the office of Alderman, for which he gave to the Chamber of London two great standing salts of silver-gilt. “He made his will on the 17th September 1532, and on the 21st of the same month he conveyed to his brethren of the Paynter-Stayners a house in Trinity Lane, which he had purchased nearly thirty years before, and which has from that time continued to be the Painters’ Hall. Dying soon after, he was buried in the church of St. Vedast, at the west end of Chepe; and his will was proved on the 2nd December following.”[[542]]
This will, and the documents in connection with the transference of the house to the Paynter-Stayners, make us acquainted with the names of many of the English painters at work in London at that period. He left all his books of arms and badges and books of tricks of arms to his apprentice, Rychard Bygnalle, as well as painting materials and other materials at cost price to a second apprentice or “servaunte,” John Childe. To Richard Calard and John Howell, both brother painters, he left his best “prymmer” and a doublet respectively. Among other English painters mentioned in the deed of September 21st, 1532, were Andrew Wright, who succeeded him as serjeant-painter, Christopher Wright, Richard Rypyngale, Richard Laine, Thomas Alexander, John Hethe, Richard Gates, Thomas Crystyne, William Lucas, Richard Hauntlowe, and Robert Cope. A later conveyance (of 1549) adds the names of several members of the Wysdom family, and David Playne, Thomas Ballard, Thomas Uncle, Thomas Cob, Thomas Spenser, John Feltes, William Wagynton, William Cudnor, Richard Flint, Richard Wright (probably a son of Andrew), and Melchior Engleberd, a foreigner who had become naturalised.[[543]]
Walpole[[544]] mentions John Browne’s portrait as still preserved in Painter-Stainers’ Hall, but it is not a contemporary work. It represents him attired in the gown and gold chain of an alderman, and was probably painted some time after the Great Fire of 1666, to take the place of an earlier one that had been destroyed.
Andrew Wright succeeded John Browne. On June 19, 1532, he received a grant of the “reversion of the office of the King’s serjeant-painter, with an annuity of £10 out of the small custom and subsidy of tonnage and poundage in the port of London, as the said office was granted by patent 12th March, 18 Hen. VIII, to John Browne.”[[545]] In the King’s accounts for February 1532 he appears, in the phonetic spelling of the day, as “Andrewe Oret,” receiving on the 20th of that month £30 for “painting of the King’s barge, and the covering of the same.”[[546]] During 1532 he was at work in Westminster Palace. Thirty-one painters were occupied there upon a large wall-painting of the Coronation of Henry VIII, “made and set out in the Low Gallery by the orchard, as also upon the outsides of the walls of the New Gallery.” Both Englishmen and foreigners were engaged. Isaac Lebrune, who appears to have been the foreman painter, received a shilling a day; John Augustyne and Nic. Lasora, tenpence; William Plasyngton, sevenpence; and Robert Short, sixpence. Andrew Wright’s share was the gilding of the gallery roof, including the painting and gilding of four “cases of iron for clockis,”[[547]] the latter being very similar to at least one piece of work undertaken by Holbein in Basel shortly after his return from his first visit to England.