Described by Karen Hearn as ‘probably the most important figure for our understanding of painting in the period following the death of Holbein’, Hans Eworth's portraits are known for their remarkable refinement and delicacy.¹ Originally born in the Netherlands, almost nothing is known of Eworth's life prior to his arrival in London some time before 1545, when he is first recorded living in Southwark. However, his surviving paintings, particularly those that remain in good condition such as the present work, demonstrate the quality and comparative sophistication of his work at this period in England and make it clear why he was able to sustain a successful career here for almost thirty years. Like Holbein, he could work on a widely ranging scale, from full-length portraits down to miniatures, and in addition to portraits he painted allegorical scenes, as well as religious and mythological works, though very few survive today. His most important patron was Queen Mary I, for whom he painted a number of portraits that share stylistic and compositional similarities with the present painting. The most important of these is the portrait belonging to the Society of Antiquaries, in which the Queen is depicted in the same, demure three-quarter-length pose, hands clasped at the waist (fig. 1).

The sitter, according to an old label on the reverse of the panel, was the daughter of William Thornbury and the wife of Richard Wakeman of Beckford, Gloucestershire (the nephew of John Wakeman (d. 1549), the last Abbot of Tewkesbury and first Bishop of Gloucester). A noted Catholic family, their great-grandson was Sir George Wakeman, the royal physician to Catherine of Braganza, Queen Consort of King Charles II, who was falsely accused of treason during the fabricated 'Popish Plot' in the late 1670s. The lyrical memento mori inscription found in the upper right of this painting is unusual in English art of the period, though such vanitas elements were becoming popular on the continent at the time, and symbolises the sitter’s spiritual disregard for the transience of temporal pleasures. A pendant portrait of her husband by Eworth, with a similar inscription, was sold in these rooms, 18 November 1964, lot 55 (fig. 2).

Hans Eworth is first recorded in the Netherlands as a freeman of the guild of St Luke in Antwerp in 1540. He was probably attracted to England in the aftermath of the death of Hans Holbein, in 1543, and is first recorded in London in 1549. Lionel Cust was the first to identify him as the artist formerly known as the monogamist HE, thanks to the discovery of his name being listed in a 1590 inventory of pictures belonging to John, 1st Baron Lumley. Since that time, some twenty-five paintings have emerged, either signed or as pendants to signed pictures, and about a dozen more are firmly attributable to him.

Though by no means exclusively, he seems to have been particularly heavily patronised by Catholic sitters, and though he appears never to have held official status at Court (though surviving records are incomplete), he was de-facto court painter to Queen Mary I. In addition to portraits, Eworth painted religious and mythological works, such as the Allegory of the Wise and Foolish Virgins (Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen), though very few such works survive, as well as producing designs for the Office of Revels. In 1572 the musician Alfonso Ferrabosco brought him in to design the decorative scheme for the tournament staged by Elizabeth I to greet the French ambassador in June that year; for which Eworth received payment of £3 19s for ‘drawing and payting of dyvers & sundry patternes/ viz/ of the Chariott & mounte… wi[th] all the p[er]sonages apparel and Instruments & setting them owte in apte cool[our]s & such like s[er]vice’.² Though he was active well into the reign of Mary’s sister, Elizabeth I, he does not appear to have painted a portrait of the new Queen, though he continued to be well patronised by the aristocracy and clergy, including: Mary Neville, Baroness Dacre, who was painted twice (National Portrait Gallery, London and National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa); Nicholas Heath, Archbishop of York (National Portrait Gallery, London); Anthony Browne, 1st Viscount Montague (National Portrait Gallery, London); Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley, and his brother Charles, Earl of Lennox (both Royal Collection); and Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk (Private collection).

The great scholar of Tudor and Elizabeth portraiture, Sir Roy Strong, in accord with Hearn’s analysis of the artist’s importance, described Eworth as ‘the most distinguished foreign painter to work in England in the Tudor period after Holbein’.³ Artistically, his early work in England, such as the Portrait of Sir John Luttrell (Courtauld Institute, London; fig. 3), demonstrates a certain debt to the Antwerp Mannerism of Frans Floris, as well as the School of Fontainebleau, occasionally including complex allegorical elements. However, his principal portrait style stemmed from that of Jan van Scorel, with a strong, three-dimensional rendering of the features, which Eworth modified with the style of Holbein’s later work, with its concern for a dazzling and exact record of magnificent dress and jewels – seen here particularly in the exquisite tactility of the sumptuous fur edging to the dress. Over time he gradually evolved a formula in his more mature work of placing the sitter against a plain ground, upon which the shadow of the figure is cast, thus enhancing the sense of three-dimensional volume and projecting the figure to the fore of the picture plane, as seen here to strong effect.

¹ K. Hearn, Dynasties. Painting in Tudor and Jacobean England 1530–1630, London 1995, p. 63.

² Quoted in Hearn 1995, p. 63.

³ R. Strong, ‘Eworth, Hans (d. 1574)’, (23 September 2004), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online, retrieved 6 Nov. 2020, from https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-37404