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Creator:
George Gower, ca. 1538–1596
Title:
Portrait of Thomas Whythorne, Musician
Date:
1569
Materials & Techniques:
Oil on board
Dimensions:
Overall: 16 5/8 × 14 5/16 inches (42.3 × 36.4 cm)
Inscription(s)/Marks/Lettering:

Inscribed in yellow paint, top right: "Anno D'ni | 1569 | Attatis. 41 | Mr. Whithorn"

Credit Line:
Yale Center for British Art, Transfer from the James Marshall and Marie-Louise Osborn Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B2024.1
Classification:
Paintings
Collection:
Paintings and Sculpture
Subject Terms:
portrait
Associated People:
Whithorne, Thomas (ca. 1528–1596), composer and autobiographer
Access:
Not on view
Link:
https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/tms:72958
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The musician and composer Thomas Whythorne (ca. 1528-1596) was typical of the new urbane and upwardly mobile professional class in Elizabethan England. Pious and vain in equal measure, Whythorne commissioned a remarkable number of portraits of himself over the course of his life, but this is the only one known to have survived.
Uniquely for the period, his diary records the experience of sitting for his portraits and his ruminations on how age and illness had changed his appearance. One entry in the diary, written twelve years since Whythorne had last sat for his portrait, gives a good sense of how sitting to an artist increased his self-knowledge: "I saw by my last counterfeit [portrait] that I was much changed from that I was at that time, as by the long and fullness of my beard, the wrinkles on my face, and the hollowness of my eyes."

Gallery label, 2016
Created by the artist George Gower (ca. 1538–96);…; by 1900 acquired by William Hayman Cummings (1831–1915) of Dulwich, London; purchased by Arthur Frederick Hill (1860-1939) of London at Christie’s, London, as a double lot (136), December 17, 1915 [a] [1]; by inheritance to his daughter of Winifred L. Hill of Worthing, Sussex; stolen ca. 1940-1945; recovered by Winifred L. Hill [2]; purchased by James Marshall Osborne (1906-1976) through Bernard Quaritch Ltd., London, at Christie’s, London, November 19, 1965 (lot 41); by whom gifted to the Beinecke Library, Yale in 1967; by whom transferred to the Yale Center for British Art, 2024.

Notes:
[1] Titles of the double lot: “Portrait of Thomas Whithorne, Esq. musical amateur (published collections of part-songs, 1571-1590), in black dress, with inscription and coat-of-arms; and Portrait of Dr. John Bull, organist of Hereford Cathedral, 1582; conductor at the entertainment of James I by the Merchant Taylors’ Company, 1607; organist of Chapel Royal, Brussels, 1614, and of Antwerp Cathedral, 1612-28”
[2] “Seasons Greetings from the Osbornes”, 1966 [Beinecke Library Archive, Curatorial File]

Citations:
[a] Christie's, London. December 17, 1915. Catalogue of Portraits of Musical Celebrities and Pictures and Drawings the Property of Dr. W. H. Cummings, F.S.A., p. 24, lot 136, Fiche B51

Christie's Sale Catalogue : Important English Pictures : 19 November 1965, Christie's, November 19, 1965, p. 22-23, lot 41, Fiche B51 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Christie's sale catalogue : Catalogue of Portraits of Musical Celebrities and Pictures and Drawings the Property of Dr. W. H. Cummings, F.S.A. : 17 December 1915, Christie's, London, December 17, 1915, p. 24, lot 136, Fiche B51 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Tarnya Cooper, Citizen Portrait : Portrait Painting and the Urban Elite of Tudor and Jacobean England and Wales, Yale University Press, New Haven, p. 56-58, ND1314.2 .C662 2012 OVERSIZE (YCBA) [YCBA]

Loan Exhibition Depicting the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, 26th January - March 1933 in aid of the Young Women's Christian Association, Battley Brothers, London, p, 29, no. 177, N6765 L63 (YCBA) [YCBA]

Thomas Whythorne, Autobiography of Thomas Whythorne, Oxford University Press, London, Frontis, p. 115, ML410 W6414 A3 1962 (YCBA) [YCBA]


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