Portrait of Sir Thomas Wyatt the Younger (c.1521-1544), bust-length, in profile

For over three generations the political loyalties and machinations of the Wyatt family played out at the heart of the Tudor court, culminating in the exploits of Thomas Wyatt the Younger, the sitter immortalised in this striking portrait. The leader and namesake of ‘Wyatt’s Rebellion’, he led an uprising designed to stop Queen Mary’s marriage to Philip II of Spain. He marched from Kent to London, was abandoned by his followers, forced to surrender and ultimately beheaded in 1554 for high treason. Wyatt became a fabled subject of history and literature, including as the protagonist in John Webster and Thomas Dekker’s play Sir Thomas Wyatt.

He was born into one of the most renowned families associated with the court; his grandfather Sir Henry Wyatt (c. 1460-1536), enjoyed royal favour from Henry VII and Henry VIII, under whom he served as Privy Councillor and Guardian. Henry Wyatt’s son, and the present sitter’s father, Sir Thomas Wyatt the Elder (1503-1542), entered Henry VIII’s service as a courtier and diplomat, representing the King in Spain, Italy and France. He is perhaps now best-known as one of England’s foremost lyric poets who introduced the sonnet form to England from Italy, and for his association with the Boleyn family. The Wyatts were significant patrons of Holbein, the most important painter at the Tudor court, from whom they commissioned portraits and designs for other objects, including a metalwork book-cover now in the British Museum, London, bearing the initials 'TWI' and 'IWT', probably referring to Thomas Wyatt the Younger and his wife, Jane. Holbein's extant portraits of Henry Wyatt (Paris, Musée du Louvre) and Thomas Wyatt the Elder (London, Royal Collection) probably date from around the mid-late 1530s.

Four different versions of this composition are known. One, now in the Louvre Abu Dhabi, is thought to be a late work painted by Holbein circa 1540, when the sitter was around 20 years old. The other three, including the present work, are all presumed to be late sixteenth-century copies. Roy Strong suggested that this panel was copied after the Abu Dhabi painting, and in turn was used as the prototype for a version now in the collection of the Earls of Romney (Strong, op. cit., p. 54). This argument is partially based on a theory that the present work was in the collection of Lord Lumley by the 1590s, but there is currently no evidence to prove this. A fourth version in the National Portrait Gallery, London, is now given to a late sixteenth-century English or Anglo-Netherlandish artist.

By the time of the 1909 London exhibition, the attribution of the present portrait to Holbein was under question. In his review, Roger Fry mused that despite its ‘technical excellence’, its author remained ‘one of the most inscrutable riddles of the exhibition’, ultimately concluding that it was painted in England with a Flemish influence (Fry, op. cit., p. 75). His assertion that it was painted from life can be safely ruled out, confirmed by dendrochronological analysis carried out by Peter Klein, which points to a felling date of between 1587 and 1597, and a likely creation date from 1595 onwards, around half a century after Wyatt and Holbein’s deaths (report by Dr. Peter Klein dated 6 January 2019, available upon request). Some underdrawing is visible in natural light, particularly defining the outline of Wyatt's head and features, including his eyelids, nostrils, the shape of the beard and the hair, demonstrating a hatching technique quite different to the version in the Louvre Abu Dhabi and to the Romney picture.

The simplicity of the format, presenting the sitter in profile against a plain blue background, in a tondo, is presumably intended to evoke ancient forms of busts and cameos. It was probably informed by his Humanist father’s interest in antiquity, also depicted by Holbein in a similar format in a woodcut after a design by the artist that appears in John Leland’s Naeniae in mortem Thomae Viati equitis incomparabilis (1542). Thomas Wyatt the Elder is seen in roundel, in almost full profile, with a form of Roman-inspired drapery around his shoulders. Another portrait of Wyatt the Elder, presumably after a lost original by Holbein reproduces a similar profile (London, National Portrait Gallery). Holbein employed the same pose in his renowned portrait of Simon George of Cornwall (Frankfurt, Städel Museum) and it was presumably intended to imbue his sitters with grace and dignity, here conveying nothing of the present sitter’s colourful life.

A note on the Provenance
King Charles I formed one of the greatest collections of masterpieces of his age that ranked on equal terms with those formed over successive generations by the great royal houses of Europe and included works by Titian, Van Dyck, Rubens and Dürer. Following the King’s execution in 1649, the collection was almost entirely sold off and only some of the paintings made their way back to the Royal Collection after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. Today, three paintings by Holbein owned by Charles I remain in the Royal Collection (Johannes Froben, A Merchant of the German Steelyard: 'Hans of Antwerp' and William Reskimer), and one recorded in the inventory of his widow, Henrietta Maria ('Noli me Tangere').

The present work bears the brand of Charles I on the reverse, confirming that the painting was once in the King’s collection. The use of the brand, with initials and crown, to denote works in the King’s collection, was presumably conceived of by Charles I’s Surveyor of the King’s Pictures, Abraham van der Doort, who was charged with the care of the paintings in the collection. He compiled a very carefully drawn-up inventory of the collection at Whitehall Palace, around 1639. This painting has historically been associated with an entry in the inventory, described in van der Doort’s typically idiosyncratic terms as ‘Item in an ould defaced round gilded frame painted upon a board a Certaine Gentleman almost sidefaced wth a long Beard, and in a black Capp, houlding with one of his hands, his furr’d gowne, the picture being defaced by washing, don upon ye right light. Don by Holben given to yor Maty by Sr Robt. Killegrew. The Queenes Vice Chamblaine’ (Millar, op. cit., p. 85). However, the description of a gentleman with a long beard, in a black cap, holding his fur gown with one hand cannot apply to this painting. The picture therefore appears to be one of many which cannot be matched with a specific reference in the inventory, or in the Commonwealth Sale catalogue compiled after Charles I’s death. As Dr. Niko Munz points out, the reasons for this could be several, including that it may be referenced in the Sale Catalogue of Charles I’s collection, but with a generic description, such as ‘A side face’ (O. Millar, ‘The Inventories and Valuations of the King’s Goods 1649-1651’, The Walpole Society, XLIII, 1970-1972, p. 199), or that it appears neither in the 1639 inventory nor the Sale Catalogue, because it was hanging somewhere other than Whitehall and then left the collection before the sale of the King's collection from 1649.

In the nineteenth century, the painting was bought by Francis Gibson, a Quaker businessman from Saffron Walden, who was a direct descendant of Sir Henry Wyatt. Gibson’s collection passed to his daughter and son-in-law, Elizabeth and Lewis Fry, founders of the Fry Art Gallery, and has since passed by descent.

We are grateful to Dr. Niko Munz for his advice relating to Abraham van der Doort and Charles I’s collection.