Room Guide

This exhibition presents the work which the German artist Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/8–1543) carried out in England in 1526–8 and 1532–43. Holbein’s extraordinary talents as a painter and designer made him one of the greatest artists of sixteenth century Europe. King Henry VIII appointed him his court painter, and his work was in demand among the courtiers, merchants and others living in and around the City of London.

The exhibition explores the impact of Holbein’s presence on the commissioning and enjoyment of works of art in England during an increasingly prosperous but also turbulent period. In the 1530s Henry VIII broke away from the Catholic church and embarked on a series of marriages in search of a male heir, actions which changed the course of English history.

The exhibition also examines the different ways in which Holbein produced a range of work, building on traditional working procedures for the preparation of works of art of all types which were common throughout Northern Europe.

Views of this exhibition Room 1 © Tate 2006 See Room 1 for all works in this space.	Views of this exhibition Room 1 © Tate 2006 See Room 1 for all works in this space.

Trained in his father’s workshop in Augsburg, Southern Germany, Holbein had a decade of experience as a painter and designer in Basel, Switzerland before coming to London. As a German immigrant he arrived in London in need of powerful patrons to protect him from the anger of rival English painters, who resented the success of foreigners working in London. He also needed to forge relationships with fellow foreigners in order to procure materials and a workshop, establish lucrative collaborations with goldsmiths and perhaps find assistants for his work of painting and designing.

Holbein was also celebrated in England, however, as an inspired artistic genius, a ‘new Apelles’, the greatest painter of the classical past. Humanist classical learning now provided the basis for the education of courtiers, as well as reasons to celebrate an artist as skilled in the art of illusionism as Holbein. Humanism also supported the new fashion for ‘antique work’, Renaissance-style design inspired by the classical past, at which Holbein excelled. Although Holbein is best known as a portraitist, this exhibition also demonstrates the great range and innovation of his work as a designer of precious objects, from small pieces of jewellery to weapons and glittering table ornaments.

Views of this exhibition Room 4 © Tate 2006 See Room 4 for all works in this space.	Views of this exhibition Room 7 © Tate 2006 See Room 7 for all works in this space.

There was an increased appetite for works of art of all kinds in England during the first half of the sixteenth century, and innovations in both secular and religious imagery, which Holbein was well placed to supply. As well as many smaller works, the exhibition includes all the surviving preparatory designs for the great lost large-scale paintings Holbein made for his English patrons: the group portrait of the family of Sir Thomas More (Room 1) the allegorical Triumphs of Riches and Poverty (Room 3), made for the London Hanseatic merchants, and a celebration of the Tudor dynasty painted on the wall of the Privy Chamber at Whitehall Palace for King Henry VIII (Room 5).

When he first arrived in England in 1526, Sir Thomas More expressed a fear that Holbein’s art would not thrive. This comprehensive demonstration of the variety of Holbein’s work allows a proper appreciation of the ways in which England offered a truly fertile ground for the full range of his artistic skill and invention.