Hans Eworth
Hans Eworth or Hans Ewouts (c. 1520 – 1574) was a Flemish painter active in England in the mid-16th century. Along with other exiled Flemings, he made a career as an artist to the Tudor court, painting allegorical images as well as portraits of the gentry and nobility.[1] About 40 paintings are now attributed to Eworth,[2] among them portraits of Mary I and Elizabeth I. Eworth also executed decorative commissions for Elizabeth's Office of the Revels in the early 1570s.
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Nothing is known of Eworth's early life or training. As "Jan Euworts"[3], he is recorded as a freeman of the artists' Guild of St Luke in Antwerp in 1540. "Jan and Nicholas Ewouts, painter and mercer" were expelled from Antwerp for heresy in 1544.[4] By 1545 he was resident in London, where he is well recorded (under a wide variety of spellings).[1]
Eworth's earliest surviving works date from 1549 to 1550. These include the allegorical portrait of Sir John Luttrell with the goddess Pax, commemorating Luttrell's military exploits and the Treaty of Boulogne (24 March 1550) which finally brought peace between England, Scotland, and France after the long wars known as the Rough Wooing.[5] The damaged original signed with Eworth's "HE" monogram is in the Courtauld Institute. Much of the missing detail and inscriptions can be determined from the copy at Dunster Castle painted in 1591 for Luttrell's nephew and heir, George Luttrell.[6][7]
Eworth's most important patron was the Catholic queen Mary Tudor. All his known portraits of Mary I appear to be variants of a portrait in the National Portrait Gallery, London (above) which is signed 'HE' and dated 1554 at the top left.[2] A second portrait, now in the Society of Antiquaries, is also signed and dated 1554. Two other portraits show Mary in later fashions and are thought to have been painted between 1555 and Mary's death in 1558. Over the next decade, Eworth continued to paint portraits of the aristocracy, including paired portraits of the Duke of Norfolk and his second wife and of the Earl and Countess of Moray.[8] Eworth's popularity with the Catholic party may account for his absence as a court painter in the early years of the reign of her Protestant sister Elizabeth.[1]
Despite the frequent appearance of a characteristic "HE" monogram, the attribution of works to Eworth—and the identification of his sitters—remains in flux. A well-known painting identified by George Vertue in 1727 as Lady Frances Brandon and her second husband Adrian Stokes was not correctly identified as Mary Nevill, Baroness Dacre and her son Gregory Fiennes, 10th Baron Dacre by Eworth until 1986.[9] The allegorical painting Elizabeth I and the Three Goddesses (1569), with its very different "HE" monogram, was variously attributed by Sir Roy Strong cautiously to "The Monogrammist HE" in 1969[10] and more confidently to Joris Hoefnagel in 1987;[11] it is now generally, but not conclusively, accepted as the work of Eworth[4] and perhaps marks the beginning of his return to favour. Eworth's last known portraits date to around 1570 (a portrait of Elizabeth I of c. 1570 sold at auction in 1996 and now in the Berger Collection is attributed to Eworth).
Like other artists associated with the English court, Eworth was also engaged in decorative work, designing a masque to be played for Elizabeth and the French Ambassador in 1572. Payment records show that Eworth was designing for the Office of the Revels as late as 1573, and he likely died in 1574.[1][4]
 Henry FitzAlan, 12th Earl of Arundel as a Roman Emperor, 1550 |
 Portrait of an Unknown Lady, formerly called Mary I, c. 1550–55 |
 Mary I 1554, oil on panel |
 Mary I c. 1555–58, oil on panel |
 Portrait of Lady Dacre c. 1555–1558, oil on panel |
 Mary Nevill and her son Gregory Fiennes, 1559 |
 Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley and Charles Stuart, 1563 |
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 Margaret Audley, Duchess of Norfolk, 1562, companion to previous |
 Elizabeth I and the Three Goddesses, 1569 |
 Elizabeth I c. 1570 |
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Hans Eworth |
- ^ a b c d Concise Grove Dictionary of Art, "Hans Eworth".
- ^ a b Cooper, "Hans Eworth: Four case studies of painting methods and techniques"
- ^ Hearn has "Eeuwowts", p. 63
- ^ a b c Hearn pp. 63–64
- ^ The complex allusions in this painting were first decoded by Dame Frances Yates in "The Allegorical Portraits of Sir John Luttrell", Essays in the History of Art Presented to Rudolf Wittkower (London, 1967), pp. 149–60, cited and summarized in Hearn, p. 65 and Cooper, p. 22
- ^ Cooper, p. 22.
- ^ Tabitha Barber, notes on "Sir John Luttrell" in Hearn, pp. 65–66
- ^ Strong 1969
- ^ Based on the ages of sitters and a ring worn by Mary Nevill; see Hearn, p. 68; see also Honig, "In Memory: Lady Dacre and Pairing by Hans Eworth" in Renaissance Bodies: The Human Figure in English Culture c. 1540–1660.
- ^ Strong 1969
- ^ Strong 1987, p. 42
- Cooper, Tanya, A Guide to Tudor & Jacobean Portraits, National Portrait Gallery, London, 2008, ISBN9781855143937
- Cooper, Tanya. "Hans Eworth: Four case studies of painting methods and techniques". Making Art in Tudor Britain. Retrieved on 2008-11-14.
- "Hans Eworth." In The Concise Grove Dictionary of Art. Oxford University Press, Inc., 2002. Answers.com 14 Nov. 2008. [1]
- Hearn, Karen, ed. Dynasties: Painting in Tudor and Jacobean England 1530-1630. New York: Rizzoli, 1995. ISBN 0-8478-1940-X
- Honig, Elizabeth, "In Memory: Lady Dacre and Pairing by Hans Eworth" in Renaissance Bodies: The Human Figure in English Culture c. 1540–1660 edited by Lucy Gent and Nigel Llewellyn, Reaktion Books, 1990, ISBN 0-948462-08-6
- Strong, Roy,The English Icon: Elizabethan and Jacobean Portraiture, 1969, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London (Strong 1969)
- Strong, Roy, Nicholas Hilliard, 1975, Michael Joseph Ltd, London, ISBN 0718113012 (Strong 1975)
- Waterhouse, Ellis, Painting in Britain, 1530–1790, 4th Edn, 1978, Penguin Books (now Yale History of Art series)
