Holbein may be recorded as the earliest painter of portraits in miniature, which were mostly circular, and all those which I have seen were relieved by blue backgrounds. He was also the designer and draughtsman of numerous subjects for the use of the court jewellers, as may be seen in a most curious volume preserved in the print-room of the British Museum, many of which are beautifully coloured. Holbein must have been a most indefatigable artist, for he was not only employed to paint that fine picture of King Henry granting the charter to the Barber-Surgeons,[475] now to be seen in Barbers’ Hall, Monkwell Street,[476] that in Bridewell of King Edward VI. granting the charter to the citizens of London,[477] but numerous portraits for the Howards, and other noble families; indeed, the quantity of engravings from the burin of Hollar and other artists, from Holbein’s works, prove that painter to have been just as extensively employed as Vandyke.
SIR EDMUND BERRY GODFREY
“He was esteemed the best Justice of Peace in England.”
Burnet
King Charles I., it is stated, became possessed of numerous portraits drawn by Holbein, of several personages of the crown and court of King Henry VIII., from characters high in office, to Mother Jack,[478], considered to have been the nickname of Mrs. Jackson, the nurse of Prince Edward. These interesting drawings, it is said, the King parted with for a picture; but how they again became the property of the Crown, I am uninformed. However, true it is that they were discovered in Kensington Palace, and taken from their frames and bound in two volumes. During Mr. Dalton’s[479] librarianship he etched many of them in his coarse and hurried manner. Since then Mr. Chamberlaine,[480] his successor, employed Mr. Metz[481] to engrave one or two as specimens of an intended work, but Mr. Bartolozzi’s manner being considered more likely to sell, that artist was engaged to produce the present plates, which certainly are far from being facsimiles of Holbein’s drawings, which I have seen. Many of this master’s invaluable pictures are engraved and published in the work entitled Portraits of Illustrious Personages of Great Britain; accompanied by the biographical lucubrations of Edmund Lodge, Esq.[482]
The liberality of the brothers Paul and Thomas Sandby, Royal Academicians, will be remembered by every person who had the pleasure of being acquainted with them; but more particularly by those who benefited by their disinterested communications and cheering encouragement in their art. For my own part, I shall ever consider myself indebted to them for a knowledge of lineal perspective. By their indefatigable industry, the architecture of many of the ancient seats of our nobility and gentry will be perpetuated; and I may say, but for the very accurate and elaborate drawings taken by Paul from Old Somerset House gardens, exhibiting views up and down the river, much of the Thames scenery must have been lost.[483] The view up the river exhibits the landing-stairs of Cuper’s Gardens, and that part of the old palace of Whitehall then inhabited by the Duchess of Portland, upon the site of which the houses of that patron of the arts, Lord Farnborough,[484] and other noblemen and gentlemen, have recently been erected. The one down the river displays an uninterrupted view of the buildings on either side to London Bridge, upon which the houses are seen, by reason of Blackfriars Bridge not then being erected. These drawings are in water-colours, and are preserved in the thirteenth volume of Pennant’s interesting account of London, magnificently illustrated, and bequeathed to the print-room of the British Museum by the late John Charles Crowle, Esq.[485]
Should my reader’s boat ever stop at York Watergate,[486] let me request him to look up at the three upper balconied windows of that mass of building on the south-west corner of Buckingham Street. Those, and the two adjoining Westminster, give light to chambers occupied by that truly epic historical painter, and most excellent man, Etty, the Royal Academician, who has fitted up the balconied room with engravings after pictures of the three great masters, Raphael, Nicholas Poussin, and Rubens.
The other two windows illumine his painting-room, in which his mind and colours resplendently shine, even in the face of one of the grandest scenes in Nature, our river Thames and city edifices, with a most luxuriant and extensive face of a distant country, the beauties of which he most liberally delights in showing to his friends from the leads of his apartments, which, in my opinion, exhibit the finest point of view of all others for a panorama. The rooms immediately below Mr. Etty’s[487] are occupied by Mr. Lloyd, a gentleman whose general knowledge in the graphic art, I and many more look up to with the profoundest respect. The chambers beneath Mr. Lloyd’s are inhabited by Mr. Stanfield,[488] the landscape-painter, whose clear representations of Nature’s tones have raised the scenic decorations of Drury Lane Theatre to that pinnacle of excellence never until his time attained, notwithstanding the productions of Lambert, Richards, nay, even Loutherbourg. Mr. Stanfield’s easel pictures adorn the cabinets of some of our first collectors, and are, like those of Callcott, Constable, Turner, Collins, and Arnald, much admired by the now numerous publishers of little works, who unquestionably produce specimens of the powers of England’s engravers, which immeasurably out-distance the efforts of all other countries.