EWORTH, Hans

(c. 1515/20-c. 1575)

One of the most influential portrait painters of the sixteenth-century English court, Hans Eworth developed a new, more sophisticated style of portraiture copied by numerous artists of the period. Little is known about Eworth's life prior to his career in England. A Dutch native, Eworth became a resident alien in London by 1549, and official records cite him as living primarily in South-wark. Most of what survives of his work are his portraits, marked by his dis­tinctive monogram "HE," including those of his most famous subjects, the Tudor monarchs, especially Edward VI and Mary I.* He also captured on canvas the most important political figures of the day, among them the duke of Northum­berland, Lord Burghley, and Lady Jane Grey.* A striking similarity appears among his sitters, and he apparently favored specific family types and charac­teristics such as those exhibited by the Brandons, the Seymours, and the Greys.

Though Eworth's early work eschews excess, by the 1560s elaborate cos­tumes, jewelry, and heraldic arms are more prominent in his portrayals. Eworth's oeuvre ranged from the full-length to the miniature and included outdoor settings and allegorical themes as well as the more formal portraits on which his fame rests. Eworth was also a designer for the court's Office of the Revels; notations from a volume of transactions related to the office document that he was paid for drawing up patterns for masques given by Elizabeth I* through 1574.

Eworth's last attributed portrait is dated 1570, but his court work extended to 1574, and several works in his style are found up to 1574. As with his origins, there is no record of the place and time of his death, though the end of his working career in 1574 probably coincides with his death shortly thereafter. In the end, Eworth's major contribution to English portraiture of the age must be his establishment of a very specific physical type that was essentially English in nature, a type that was instantly recognizable. Eworth is thus a major con­tributor to the iconography of the Tudor age.

Bibliography

L. Cust, "The Painter HE ('Hans Eworth')," Walpole Society 2 (1912-13): 1-17.

K. Hearn, ed., Dynasties: Painting in Tudor and Jacobean England, 1530-1630, 1995.

E. Mercer, ed., English Art, 1553-1625, Oxford History of English Art, Vol. 7, 1962.

Connie S. Evans