Rowland Lockey - Versions of Holbein's More Family

Versions of Holbein's More Family

He is best known for his two near life-size copies from the early 1590s of the now-lost Family of Sir Thomas More (1527) by Hans Holbein the Younger at Nostell Priory and the National Portrait Gallery in London - the original was destroyed by fire in the eighteenth century. These differ considerably, as the London version, Sir Thomas More, his father, his household and his descendants, includes More's descendants in their contemporary dress but omits several of the figures in the Holbein original. This was painted around 1593, probably commissioned by More's grandson, Thomas More II, to commemorate five generations of the family. The four figures wearing ruffs and holding prayer books on the right are Thomas More II, his wife and their oldest and youngest sons. Anne More, née Cresacre (1511–77), was Sir Thomas's daughter-in-law, and appears twice: once copied from the Holbein as a young woman of about sixteen (between Sir Thomas and his father) and also as an older woman in the painting on the rear wall. A cabinet miniature version of this portrait c. 1594 with different details, also likely by Lockey, is in the Victoria and Albert Museum. There is also a surviving drawing by Holbein which confirms the general accuracy of the Nostell Priory version.

Two further copies of the Holbein, at Old Chelsea Town Hall and Hendred House, East Hendred, may be by Lockey, but are too damaged and over-painted for any certainty to be possible.