- Museum number
- 1943,1009.35
- Description
-
The progress of Queen Elizabeth I to Nonsuch Palace; the queen in a carriage in the foreground surrounded by soldiers with pikes, the palace behind and trees and fields beyond. 1568
Pen and brown ink with grey-brown, blue and red wash; lines indented
- Production date
- 1568
- Dimensions
-
Height: 216 millimetres
-
Width: 456 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- Literature: 'The Renaissance at Sutton Palace', exh.cat. from 18 May till 15 September 1983, no.91-95; Martin Biddle, 'The Stuccoes of Nonsuch', in Burlington Magazine 126 (1984), pp.411-417.
Another version, finished in watercolour and touched with gold was subject to an export license stop on March 1, 2016, and purchased by the Victoria & Albert Museum, London with the support of the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund (museum number: E.2781-2016).
Stainton 1985
Born in Antwerp, Hoefnagel travelled extensively and drew many of the views engraved in Braun and Hogenberg's 'Civitates Orbis Terrarum', 1572-1617. This drawing is an important document, not only as a record of the great Tudor palace of Nonsuch, but also as establishing that Hoefnagel visited England in 1568.
Henry VIII began the palace in 1538; it was incomplete at his death in 1547, but was finished by Henry Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel, who bought it from Mary Tudor in 1557. In 1592 Elizabeth I acquired Nonsuch, which became one of her favourite houses; Hoefnagel thus shows it as Lord Arundel's Palace, although it was Henry VIII who was responsible for the' fantastic character of the towered façade, decorated with elaborate plasterwork in a Franco-Italianate style which recalls that at Fontainebleau. Nonsuch was demolished between 1682 and 1688.
This drawing, which Hoefnagel subsequently used in 1582 as the basis for an engraving in 'Civitates Orbis Terrarum' (vol.V, pl. 1), is often said to represent the arrival in state of Elizabeth I, although there is no record of her visiting Lord Arundel in 1568.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
1949-50 BM, English topographical and landscape drawing, no.8
1954, BM, 'Anglo-Flemish Art Under The Tudors', no.56
1958 Apr, BM, Eight centuries of landscape ... water-colours, case 16
1985, BM, 'British Landscape Watercolours 1600-1860', no. 1
1991 Jan-Mar, Cleveland Mus of Art, British Landscape Watercolours, no.1
1991 Mar-June, NC Mus of Art, British Landscape Watercolours, no.1
2001-2 Nov-May, London, Tate Britain, 'Launch Displays 2001-2'
2012 London, BM, Shakespeare
2015 Mar-Jul, Paris, Musée du Luxembourg, 'Les vrais Tudors'
- Acquisition date
- 1943
- Acquisition notes
- This item has an uncertain or incomplete provenance for the years 1933-45. The British Museum welcomes information and assistance in the investigation and clarification of the provenance of all works during that era.
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1943,1009.35
