Gold-leaf letters announce that the portrait is of “Sir Brian Tuke, fifty-seven years of age”. As if the words were spoken, his family motto “Upright and Forward” surrounds him like a garment. The folded letter on the table bears words from the Book of Job (10:20): “Are not my days numbered?” Tuke (d. 1545) was the Secretary and lifelong advisor to King Henry VIII; among other notable achievements, he established England’s postal system.
This portrait is one of six extant versions that share the same composition and dimensions. The presumed original from c. 1530, by the German artist Hans Holbein the Younger, is probably the one that today hangs in the National Gallery of Art in Washington. Scientific analysis of the wood upon which the Pasadena work is painted revealed that the panel was cut from a tree felled in 1616; therefore the painting dates to nearly a century after Holbein’s death in 1543. Holbein was known to make preparatory drawings for some of his paintings, which his workshop then re-used to make copies. While no drawing for this portrait is known, microscopic examination of the panel reveals that the outlines of the figure were incised, which suggests that a pattern transfer may have indeed been used here.
The earliest dated reference to the Pasadena painting is 1678, when a traveler saw it displayed in the home of Robert Sidney, the fourth earl of Leicester, in Kent. It remained almost two and a half centuries in that family until it was sold in 1915. The Duveen firm handled the painting twice, first in 1923 and then again in 1959, when it was deaccessioned from the collection at the Cleveland Museum of Art.
Details
- Artist Name: Hans Holbein the Younger (German, 1497-1543)
- Title: Portrait of Sir Bryan Tuke
- Date: c. 1527
- Medium: Oil on panel
- Dimensions: 19-1/2 x 15-1/4 in. (49.5 x 38.7 cm)
- Credit Line: The Norton Simon Foundation
- Accession Number: F.1965.1.030.P
- Copyright: © The Norton Simon Foundation
Object Information
Lady Emily Caroline, daughter of the First marquis of Anglesey, Henry William (Paget), married in 1832 to John Robert, third and last Viscount Sidney (1805-1890), bequeathed it to her husband’s nephew;
Robert Marsham Townshend (1834-1914),“The Sydney Collection,” sold by the executors of the Hon. Robert Marsham Townshend, Viscount Sydney (sale, Frognal, Chislehurst, Kent, Knight, Frank and Rutley, 7 June 1915, lot 11).
Hugh Blaker, London.
[Lord Joseph Duveen of Millbank, London, and New York, by 1921].
Mrs. Elizabeth Severance Prentiss, Cleveland (1865-1944), bequeathed in 1944 to;
Cleveland Museum of Art (acc. no. 44.85) and there until 1959, when sold through;
[Duveen Brothers, New York, stock 30330, sold 1965 to];
The Norton Simon Foundation.
20th Anniversary Exhibition
- Cleveland Museum of Art, 1936 to
[on loan]
- Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, 1965-03-15 to 1968-03-23
[on loan]
- Minneapolis, The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 1968-04-01 to 1968-10-31
[on loan]
- Los Angeles, The Dorothy Chandler Pavillion, Los Angeles Music Center, 1973-05-10 to 1977-10-03
[on loan]
- Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1969-07-18 to 1972-08-23
Six Centuries of Portraiture from the Permanent Collection
- Norton Simon Museum, 1989-11-02 to 1990-12-16
Lock, Stock and Barrel: Norton Simon's Purchase of Duveen Brothers Gallery
- Norton Simon Museum, 2014-10-24 to 2015-02-16
- Apollo, pp. 295, 298
- Hand, John Oliver, Studies in the History of Art, pp. 38-39
- Tatlock, R., The Burlington Magazine, pp. 246-251
- Evelyn, John, The Diary of John Evelyn, p. 18
- Vaughan, M., International Studio, p. 23
- Vaughan, M., International Studio, p. 67
- Evelyn, J., The Diary of John Evelyn, 1906,
- Cleveland Museum of Art, 20th Anniversary Exhibition, 1936,
- Kuhn, Charles L., A Catalogue of German Paintings of the Middle Ages and Renaissance in American Collections, 1936, p. 80
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Catalogue of the Elisabeth Severance Prentiss Collection. Bequest of Elisabeth Severance Prentiss 1944, 1944, pp. 22, 25
- Schmid, Heinrich Alfred, Hans Holbein der Jüngere, 1948, p. 386
- Ganz, Paul, Hans Holbein der Jüngere Gesamtausgabe der Gemälde, 1950, p. 219
- Ganz, P., The Paintings of Hans Holbein the Younger, 1956, p. 234
- Rowlands, John, Holbein: The Paintings of Hans Holbein the Younger, 1985, p. 145
- Hand, John Oliver, with Sally E. Mansfield, German Paintings of the Fifteenth through Seventeenth Centuries (The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue), 1993, pp. 95-96
- Campbell, Sara, Collector Without Walls: Norton Simon and His Hunt for the Best, 2010, cat. D27 p. 443
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