Sir Thomas More and Family

Rowland Lockey after Hans Holbein the Younger, The Family of Sir Thomas More, c. 1594

Sir Thomas More and family is a painting that was once part of the Lenthall pictures.[1]

The picture

Study for a portrait of Thomas More's family, c. 1527, by Hans Holbein the Younger

Sir Thomas More and Family is one of two near life-size copies by Rowland Lockey[2] of an original by Holbein that was lost in a fire in the 18th century.[3] It is dated 1593; Holbein died in 1554.[4] It is oil on canvas and measures 89.5 inches (227 cm) by 120 inches (300 cm). It was probably commissioned by More's grandson, Thomas More II, to commemorate five generations of the family. The National Portrait Gallery lists[5] the sitters as:

A cabinet miniature version of this portrait c. 1594 with different details, also likely by Lockey, is in the Victoria and Albert Museum.[6] [7] There is also a surviving drawing by Holbein which confirms the general accuracy of picture.

Two further copies of the Holbein, at Old Chelsea Town Hall (formerly one of the Petre Pictures) and Hendred House, East Hendred, may be by Lockey, but are too damaged and over-painted for any certainty to be possible.[8] The copy from the Lenthall collection has been described as “the most accomplished extant version”.[9]

Provenance

The painting had been at Gubbins in Hertfordshire. At some time it came into the possession of the Lenthall family, but how this happened is not known, although it may have been borrowed from the More family and never returned. In the 17th century, John Aubrey viewed it at the Besselsleigh home of Sir John Lenthall,[10] but by 1727 it was at Burford Priory.[11] It was discussed in detail by John Loveday who saw it in 1736. The painting was unsold in a small sale of the Lenthall pictures in 1808 but was offered again and sold in a major sale in 1833. It was subsequently owned by Walter Strickland, CW Dormer, Sir Hugh Lane, Viscount Lee, and EJ Horniman whose widow bequeathed it to the National Portrait Gallery where it remains.[12] It was the centre piece in the exhibition, The King's Good Servant, at the National Portrait Gallery in 1977.[13]

Notes

  1. ↑ The English Counties Delineated, Volume 2, Thomas Moule, 1837
  2. ↑ Cooper, Tarnya (2008). A Guide to Tudor & Jacobean Portraits. National Portrait Gallery. p. 38.
  3. ↑ UK and Ireland Genealogy
  4. ↑ A biographical and critical dictionary of painters and engravers, Michael Bryan, page 337
  5. ↑ NPG catalogue entry
  6. ↑
    • Strong, Roy (1969). The English Icon: Elizabethan and Jacobean Portraiture, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul p. 255.
  7. ↑ V&A Museum
  8. ↑ Lewis, Lesley (1998). The Thomas More Family Group Portraits After Holbein. Gracewing, Fowler Wright Books. p. 9. ISBN 0852444664.
  9. ↑ Eade, Jane; Taylor, David (2015). "Sir Thomas More’s Family". National Trust Historic Houses and Collections Annual. Apollo. p. 9.
  10. ↑ Hearn, Thomas; Aubrey, John (1813). Letters Written by Eminent Persons in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: to which are Added, Hearne's Journeys to Reading, and to Whaddon Hall, the Seat of Browne Willis, Esq., and Lives of Eminent Men, by John Aubrey, Esq. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown. p. 464.
  11. ↑ Tudor and Jacobean Portraits, Roy Strong, HMSO, 1969
  12. ↑ Lewis, 1998, p.32
  13. ↑ Lewis, 1998, p.32
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