- Museum number
- 1895,0915.991
- Description
-
Two views of a lady wearing an English hood; whole-length turned to left, looking down to front, wearing a long dress with square neck and a head-dress, holding a rosary in front of her, at right the same figure, seen from behind, her left arm raised
Brush drawing in brown ink, tinted with pink and grey wash; on off-white paper
- Production date
- 1532-1535 (circa)
- Dimensions
-
Height: 159 millimetres
-
Width: 110 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- Summary of J.Rowlands, 'Drawings by German Artists and Artists from German- speaking regions of Europe in the Department of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum: the Fifteenth Century, and the Sixteenth Century by Artists born before 1530', London, BM Press, 1993, no. 319:
'The details of costume and head-dress which the artist has noted in these two studies bear a close resemblance to the dress worn by Lady Guildford in Holbein's portrait of her, dated 1527 (Missouri, St Louis Art Museum; Rowlands, 'Holbein', pl. 54). The English hood is of the same type and worn with the two tails hanging loose down the back. While his female sitters continued to be painted in the English hood as late as Jane Seymour's portrait of 1536 (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, inv. no. 881; Rowlands, 'Holbein', pl. 99), by the mid-1530s it became fashionable for the sides and tails of the hood to be turned up, as one finds is the case with the majority of female sitters wearing the English hood in Holbein's portrait drawings of his second English period. In style these rapidly drawn studies, differ markedly from the group of drawings that Holbein had done earlier, according to Ganz before 1520 but more probably by 1524, of women in different Basel costumes, executed in stiff poses with sharp outlines and very finished in detail. Because of the clear link Ganz saw with the 'Portrait of Lady Guildford', he dated the present drawing to 1527/8; even so 1532/3 is also not impossible. Another costume study of a woman, evidently a citizen's wife, completely worked up with watercolour, was also executed in England (Oxford, Ashmolean Museum; Parker, 'Ashmolean', pl. lviii).'
Lit. from Rowlands 1993: Woltmann, ii, p. 139, no. 210; JCR, p. 179, no. 535; LB, ii, p. 329, no. 11; Chamberlain, i, pp. 356ff.; Ganz, p. 35, no. 150, repr.; White, p. 558, no. 2; Roberts, Holbein, p. 60, under no. 13, repr.; BM Dürer and Holbein, p. 230, no. 197, repr.
Additional lit: Lit: S. Foister, 'Holbein and England', New Haven and London, 2004, p.55, fig.58; C. Müller, 'Hans Holbein der Jüngere: die Jahre in Basel' exh.cat. Basel, Kunstmuseum, 2006, p.420, no. 150; S. Foister, 2006, no.122
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
1879 May-Jun, Paris, École des Beaux-Arts, 'Des Dessins de Maîtres Anciens', no. 273
1984, BM, 'Master Drawings & Watercolours', no. 60
1988, July-Oct, BM, 'Age of Dürer & Holbein', no. 197
1997/8 Nov-Feb, London, National Gallery, 'Holbein's Ambassadors'
2003 Jan-Apr, London, National Gallery, 'Hans Holbein'
2006 Apr-Jul, Basel, Kunstmuseum, 'Hans Holbein II: The Basel Years 1515-1532', no.150
2006/7 Sep-Jan, London, Tate Britain, 'Holbein in England', no.122
- Acquisition date
- 1895
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1895,0915.991
