English School 16th Century

half length, wearing an embroidered and jewelled dress with a veil, and holding a red rose of the House of Lancaster

Be descent in the family of the Dukes of Hamilton

'Pictures Belonging to his Grace the Last deceased James Duke of Hamilton and Brandon', 7 June 1759, MSS, no. 262 ('The Countess of Richmond Henry the 8th Mother with a red rose in her hand by Holbein' - located in 'Her Grace's Clossett');
Roy Strong, Tudor & Jacobean Portraits, 1969, Text Volume, p. 98

The sitter was the eldest child of King Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville, his wife. On 18th January 1486 she married Henry Tudor, who had defeated Richard III at Bosworth the previous year and been crowned Henry VII on 30th October. This important union linked the two families of Lancaster and York. In the early Hamilton inventory (see below) she is described as Countess of Richmond, though in fact the proposal that she should marry the Earl of Richmond in 1484 never got as far as marriage. This fine portrait was in the collection of the Dukes of Hamilton since at least the eighteenth century, and may have been descended from the sitter's daughter Margaret who married Archibald Douglas, 6th Earl of Angus.