HOLBEIN AND HENRY VIII.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
Sitt,—I would refer "R. W. D." to Mr. Ernest Law's work on the Holbeins at Windsor (G. Bell and Sons) as to the non-existence of any portrait in oil of Henry VIII. On p. 13 is the following:— "It is a remarkable fact, considering the intimate relations that subsisted for so many years between Henry VIII. and Holbein, that there does not appear to exist anywhere a single oil painting of the King, which can be assigned with any sort of certainty, or even probability, to the hand of the master himself. We may even go further, and declare that except for the famous cartoon, now in the possession of the Duke of Devonshire at Hardwick Hall, which was the design of the great wall painting at Whitehall, and the study in black and red chalk, preserved in the Royal Cabinet of Prints and Drawings at Munich, for Henry's bead in the same, there is not in existence even a sketch of the Ring which can be positively set down to Holbein."
am, Sir, &c., H. S.
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