Physical description
A group portrait of a family seated in an interior, a view of a garden through an arch in the right background. The painting is held in cabinet wiht double locking doors. Inscriptions in gold in the top left and bottom right corners.
Place of Origin
England, Great Britain (painted)
Date
1593-1594 (painted)
after 1715 (made)
Artist/maker
Lockey, Rowland, born 1560 - died 1616 (artist)
Hans Holbein, born 1497 - died 1543 (after, painter (artist))
Unknown (painter (artist))
Materials and Techniques
Watercolour on vellum, stuck onto card
Marks and inscriptions
'A Johanes Morus eques auratus et iudex; B. Tho. Mors eques aur. Dns. Canc. Ang. et fil. et haer, dti; C. John More Ar. fil et haer. Dti. Tho.; D. Anna Jois sola fil, et haer. Ed. Cresacre Ar. Vxor Joh. Mor Ar. E. Tho. More (II) Arm. fil et haer. Dictor. Joh. Mor. Ar. et An Vx. eius; F. Maria fil Joh. Scroope, Ar. frat. Henrici Dni. Scroope,; G Duo Filij dictor Tho Mor. et Mar Vx. eius'
'Thomas Morus Londini / An. Do. 1480. est natus / Saccarij primu. Tum A.D. / 1529. totius Angliae / Cancellarius est tactus / Henrici: 8. iussu decollatus / interijt A.D. 1535. 6 non. Jul.'
Dimensions
Height: 24.1 cm, Width: 29.2 cm
Descriptive line
Miniature group portrait of Sir Thomas More, his household and descendants, watercolour on vellum, set in a walnut cabinet, painted by Rowland Lockey, 1593-1594.
Bibliographic References (Citation, Note/Abstract, NAL no)
Strong, Roy. Artists of the Tudor Court: the Portrait Miniature Rediscovered 1520-1620. London: The Victoria and Albert Museum, 1983.
Cat. 267, pp. 159-161. Full Citation:
“267 Sir Thomas More, his father, his household and his descendants, 1593-94
Victoria & Albert Museum (P.15-1973)
Vellum stuck onto card, rectangular, 24.6 x 29.4 mm, 9 11/16 x 11 9/16 in., in a walnut cabinet with double locking doors.
From left to right and as identified by the gold letters on their clothing: A: Sir John More (?1451-1530), a barrister, Serjeant at Law (1503), Judge of the Court of Common Please (1518) and one of the King’s Bench (1523); B: Sir Thomas More (1477/8-1535), Humanist and Chancellor; C: John More (?1509-47), Sir Thomas’s youngest child and only son; D: Anne Cresacre (1511-77), the only daughter and heiress of Edward Cresacre of Barnborough, Yorkshire, ward of Sir Thomas, whose son, John, she married in 1529; E: Thomas More II (1531-1606), son of John More and Anne Cresacre, who probably commissioned, from Lockey, the miniature; F: Mary Scrope (1534-1607), niece of Lord Scrope of Bolton and wife of Thomas More II; G: John More (1577-1599?) and Cresacre More (1572-1649), sons of Thomas More II; H: Cecily Heron (b. 1507), Elizabeth Dauncey (b. 1506) Margaret Roper (1505-1544), the three daughters. The figure in the background lifting the curtain is the More family jester, Henry Patenson.
The miniature depicting Sir Thomas More, his family and descendants is a unique visual document which can only be understood be reference to the original Holbein painting of Sir Thomas and his family and to other paintings connected with it, commissioned at the same time as the miniature by Thomas More II in the late Elizabethan period. The most complete discussions of this are in S. Morison and N. Barker, The Likeness of Thomas More, London, 1963, pp. 18 ff. and Strong, Tudor and Jacobean, I, pp. 345-51 and what follows is based on those accounts with an emphasis on this miniature.
One of Holbein’s earliest commissions when he arrived in England in 1527 was the famous, lost, Family Group of the More family. It was executed in the fragile medium of distemper and is known to us best by Holbein’s sketch sent to Erasmus as an interim report before the picture was finished in 1528. The picture was presumably confiscated along with More’s other chattels on his fall from power and we next hear of it in the possession of the Holbein collector, Andreas de Loo. He died in 1590 and Van Mander records that it passed to a nephew of Sir Thomas More who was also called More. This must have been More’s grandson, Thomas More II. It is next recorded in the collection of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, to whom it may have been passed by way of John, 1st Lord Lumley, the Elizabethan collector who was also a Catholic.
Albeit that the history of its early descent is patchy there is not doubt that it belonged to Thomas More II in the 1590s and that it was he and his relatives who probably commissioned Rowland Lockey to execute three paintings: (i) the life-size copy of the picture as it was which, signed by Rowland Lockey, is not in the collection of Lord St. Oswald. This descended via the Ropers who would have commissioned the copy. It has recently been cleaning revealing the date, 1592; (ii) a second life-size copy of the picture which introduced, to the right, Sir Thomas’s descendants and which, bearing the date 1593, is now in the National Portrait Gallery (2765). This we know was painted for Thomas More II and passed to his surviving son, Cresacre; (ii) the miniature version of (ii) but again with further slight variants, in particular, the introduction of a view of a garden through an arch to the right.
The miniature seems to have been in the possession of a More descendent before it entered the Sotheby collection and its portrait content establishes that it must have originated directly with Thomas More II. In date it must be slightly later than the oil version in the National Portrait Gallery because here Cresacre is shown clean shaven whereas he has a slight beard and moustache in the miniature. This would suggest a date about 1594.
Thomas More II married Mary Scrope, the niece of Lord Scrope of Bolton, in 1553. They lived on the Cresacre estates in Yorkshire until they moved south early in the 1580s, taking up residence on their Essex estate at Lower Leyton. From 1582 to 1586 Thomas More II was imprisoned for recusancy, after his release the More family continued to live quietly as recusants in the country (see D. Shanahan, “The Family of St. Thomas More in Essex”, Essex Recusant, I, pp. 62-74; 95-104; II, pp. 76-85).
Both large-scale picture and miniature transmute what Holbein had conceived with daring originality as the first family conversation piece north of the Alps, into a genealogical family tree brought to life, accentuated by the introduction of coats of arms. In the miniature these float before the canopy over the buffet and, although, on a minute scale and damaged, recording (left) those of More (Quarterly; 1 and 4 Argent a Chevron engrailed between three Moorcocks Sable crested Gules; 2 and 3, Argent on a Chevron between three Unicorns’ Heads erased Sable as many Bezants) and (right) those of Cresacre (of three Lions rampant guardant Gules) quartering those of More.
The main difference from the large version is the dropping of the portrait of Anne Cresacre on the right in favour of a garden view, which Vertue states, was More’s Chelsea garden. The panorama in the distance certainly seems to be London with Old St Paul’s in the centre, but it is difficult to know what sources existed c. 1593-94 that could possibly provide an accurate view of Sir Thomas More’s celebrated Chelsea garden half a century earlier: “A portion of this garden was left to the care of each of the many servants…He would have no idle retainer in his service…they were expected to occupy their leisure with gardening, music or books” (see Miles Hadfield, A History of British Gardening, 3rd revised ed., London, 1979, pp. 38-39). All one can say is that it is a rare view of a Tudor garden, enclosed by walls with a banqueting house in one corner and the centre laid out in knots surrounded by low clipped hedges.
The attribution of the miniature follows from the documentation of the large group being by Lockey and our knowledge that he was a pupil of Hilliard and practised as a miniaturist. This group must be the cornerstone for any further attributions to him. It does establish Lockey as an artist who never rose much above being a mediocre follower of the Hilliard manner.
The miniature is in the frame that was made for it on it s acquisition by the Sotheby family in 1715. The features have flaked and been restored. There is scattered flaking both in the background and the landscape. The paint surface is generally soiled by ingrained dirt and the silver has oxidized.
INSCRIBED: Across the top in gold: A Johanes Morus eques auratus et iudex; B. Tho. Mors eques aur. Dns. Canc. Ang. et fil. et haer, dti; C. John More Ar. fil et haer. Dti. Tho.; D. Anna Jois sola fil, et haer. Ed. Cresacre Ar. Vxor Joh. Mor Ar. E. Tho. More (II) Arm. fil et haer. Dictor. Joh. Mor. Ar. et An Vx. eius; F. Maria fil Joh. Scroope, Ar. frat. Henrici Dni. Scroope,; G Duo Filij dictor Tho Mor. et Mar Vx. eius (i.e. John and Cresacre More; H Tres filiae Tho. Mori Dni Cancellarij Angliae (i.e. Cicely Heron, Elizabeth Dauncey and Margaret Roper).
On a label in the lower left-hand corner in gold: Thomas Morus Londini / An. Do. 1480. est natus / Saccarij primu. Tum A.D. / 1529. totius Angliae / Cancellarius est tactus / Henrici: 8. iussu decollatus / interijt A.D. 1535. 6 non. Jul.
COLLECTIONS: Purchased by James Sotheby, 1705, from an unidentified Lady Gerrard, a More family descendant, for £10.15 sh; seen by Vertue in 1742 at Ecton Hall when in the possession of James Sotheby’s son: “another Curiou limning being the family piece of Sr Thomas More and his Father son and 3 daughters, his sons wife. Cresacre – his grandson Thomas More. & his Lady Scroope & their two Sons. standing – a prospect of his Gardens at Chelsea appears part of his Gallery & chapel at the distance. London spires very small. above this is the names of each person writ in small – the father of Mr. Southbys. bought this limning many years ago of a Gentlewoman who was under some necessity. – and was as I hear before (sold to him by a) daughter of one of the Mores family…” (Vertue, Notebooks, V, Walpole Society, XXVI, 1937-38, pp. 10-11); thence by descent in the Sotheby family; sold Sotheby’s October 11th 1955 (lot 67) bt the Rev. J. E. Strickland; bequeathed by his widow, Anne Louise Strickland to V&A in memory of her husband, 1973.
LITERATURE: Hoarce Walpole, Anecdotes, ed. Wornum, 1849, I, pp. 145-46.
O’Kurz, “Rowland Lockey”, Burlington Magazine, XCIX, 1957, p. 15.
Auerbach, Hilliard, pp. 258-61, pl. 227, 331 (no. 262).
Strong, Tudor and Jacobean, I, pp. 345-51.
The King’s Good Servant. Sir Thomas More, 1977 [170]. National Portrait Gallery.”
Exhibition History
Artists of the Tudor Court: the portrait miniature rediscovered, 1520-1620 (Victoria and Albert Museum 09/07/1983-06/11/19833)
Labels and date
British Galleries:
The German artist Hans Holbein painted a large portrait of Sir Thomas More and his family in 1527. This miniature version, painted for More's grandson, shows the next generation added alongside their famous grandfather. Sir Thomas More was executed in 1535 for high treason, having opposed Henry VIII over the question of his divorce and the authority of the Pope. [27/03/2003]
Production Note
The miniature is attributed to Rowland Lockey on the basis of a related large group signed by Lockey our knowledge that he was a pupil of Nicholas Hilliard and practised as a miniaturist. The picture is thought to be slightly later than the oil version in the National Portrait Gallery (dated 1593) because here Cresacre is shown clean-shaven wheras he has a slight beard and moustache in the miniature.
Materials
Watercolour; Cardboard; Walnut; Vellum (skin)
Techniques
Painting (image-making)
Subjects depicted
Costume; Furnishings; Coats of arms; Musical instruments; Room; Clock; Formal garden; More, John (Sir); More, Thomas (Sir); More, John; Cresacre, Anne; More, Thomas II; Scrope, Mary; More, John; More, Cresacre; Heron, Cecily; Dauncey, Elizabeth; Roper, Margaret; Patenson, Henry
Categories
British Galleries; Portraits; Paintings; Politics
Collection code
PDP
