German 1497-1543 Hans Holbein Galleries Holbein always made highly detailed pencil drawings of his portrait subjects, often supplemented with ink and colored chalk. The drawings emphasize facial detail and usually did not include the hands; clothing was only indicated schematically. The outlines of these drawings were then transferred onto the support for the final painting using tiny holes in the paper through which powdered charcoal was transmitted; in later years Holbein used a kind of carbon paper. The final paintings thus had the same scale as the original drawings. Although the drawings were made as studies for paintings, they stand on their own as independent, finely wrought works of art. How many portraits have been lost can be seen from Holbein's book (nearly all pages in the Royal Collection) containing preparatory drawings for portraits - of eighty-five drawings, only a handful have surviving Holbein paintings, though often copies have survived. David Hockney has speculated in the Hockney-Falco thesis that Holbein used a concave mirror to project an image of the subject onto the drawing surface. The image was then traced. However this thesis has not met with general acceptance from art historians. A subtle ability to render character may be noted in Holbein's work, as can be seen in his portraits of Thomas Cromwell, Desiderius Erasmus, and Henry VIII. The end results are convincing as definitive images of the subjects' appearance and personality.  Related Paintings of Hans Holbein :. | Portrait of Thomas More | Ximengqiaozhi | Portrait of Thomas More | Olive Hill, Christian | Madonna of Mercy and the Family of Jakob Meyer zum Hasen |
Related Artists:
James Holworthy
(d. 1841) was a British watercolour artist. Some of Holworthy's art can be seen in the Tate Gallery. Holworthy exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1803 and 1804. In the latter year he was one of the foundation members of the Society of Painters in Water-colours, now known as the Royal Watercolour Society,and he contributed constantly to their exhibitions till 1813. His subjects being drawn from Wales, the Lake district, and Yorkshire. He practised in London till 1822. In 1900, there were two drawings by him at the South Kensington Museum. In 1821, Holworthy was living in Barton in the Beans, Leicestershire. In either 1821[2] or 1824 he married Anne Wright,[3] a niece of John Wright in Derby, and retired to the Brookfield estate, near Hathersage in Derbyshire, which he had purchased. He died in London in 1841
Jan de Bray
1627-1697 Dutch Painter, draughtsman and etcher, son of (1) Salomon de Bray. He spent virtually the whole of his career in Haarlem, except for the period 1686-8, when he lived in Amsterdam. After training with his father, Jan began working as a portrait painter in Haarlem in 1650, an activity he continued for the next 40 years. Between 1667 and 1684 he served on the committee for the Haarlem Guild of St Luke, whose leading members he portrayed in a picture dated 1675 (Amsterdam, Rijksmus.) that includes a self-portrait (Jan is seen standing and drawing on the left). He married three times, in 1668, 1670 and 1672. His first two wives died a year after their marriage, his third two years afterwards, and in each case the death was followed by disputes over the inheritance. Jan bankruptcy of 1689 may have been a result of one of the lawsuits. He was 62 at the time, and from then onwards he seems to have lost his artistic drive, crushed by the financial blow and the consequent loss of social position.
Frederic james Shields,ARWS
1833-1911