ATTRIBUTED TO HENRY STONE (1616-1653)Portrait of Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk and Earl of

ATTRIBUTED TO HENRY STONE (1616-1653)

Portrait of Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke of Norfolk and Earl of Surrey (1473-1554)

standing, full-length, wearing a lynx fur, over a black robe, holding the gold baton of Earl Marshall and the white staff of Lord High Treasurer, and wearing the Order of the Garter

bearing inscription ‘Thomas, Duke ofe (sic) Norfolk Marshall and Tresurer of Ingland. The LXVI Yeare ofe his Age’

oil on canvas

88 x 53 ½ in (223.6 x 135.7cm)



The sitter was appointed Lord High Admiral of England, 1513, Lord Treasurer 1524, Earl Marshall 1533, Ambassador to Paris 1536, Lieutenant General of the King’s Forces 1542. He was an uncle of two of the wives of King Henry VIII, namely Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard. After falling from favour in 1546 he was stripped of the dukedom and imprisoned in the Tower of London only avoiding execution when Henry VIII died a year later.



The sitter was described by Ludovico Falieri, Venetian Ambassador, in November 1531 as ‘prudent, liberal, affable and astute…… who has very great experience in political government’. Norfolk’s own education and instincts were old fashioned, in religion and politics. As a politician he was conservative, unimpressed by the new ideas of the reformers and uncomfortable with the ‘new men’ of the Tudor Court. He claimed the deference due the leader of the traditional nobility, yet recognised uneasily that loyalty, ability and service counted as or more than ancient title to the Tudors.



The prototype for this portrait is a three-quarter length portrait of Thomas Howard by Hans Holbein the Younger, in the Royal Collection. A version of that work is also at Arundel Castle

There is also at Arundel, a full length seventeenth century portrait, similar in composition to the portrait at Brightwells. Sir Oliver Millar's opinion was that the Arundel portrait was a copy after Holbein, by Daniel Mytens , perhaps done for Thomas Howard, 'the Collector Earl' as a history portrait.

The attribution of the portrait at Brightwells to Henry Stone is a traditional one. Henry Stone, known as ‘Old Stone’ was the son of the master mason Nicholas Stone. He travelled to Italy as a young man where he visited the studio of Bernini. He was a pupil of Thomas de Keyser in Amsterdam from 1635-1638. He later became a noted copyist, particularly of Van Dyck, and various other English and Italian Masters.