of
Sir John Luttrell, 1550, oil on panel Nothing is known of Eworth's early life or training. As ″Jan Euworts″, he is recorded as a freeman of the artists'
Guild of St Luke in
Antwerp in 1540. A ″Jan and Nicholas Ewouts, painter and mercer″ were expelled from Antwerp for heresy in 1544 and scholars generally accept that this Jan is the same individual. By 1545 Eworth was resident in London, where he is well recorded (under a wide variety of spellings) from 1549. The original – signed with the "HE" monogram Eworth consistently used — was donated to the
Courtauld Institute of Art by
Arthur Lee, 1st Viscount Lee of Fareham in 1932. The painting was in "badly damaged" condition when it was donated to the institute, although it has subsequently been conserved and restored. Although there is no direct evidence that Eworth's most important patron was the Catholic queen
Mary I, most scholars now accept this to be the case. All his known portraits of Mary I appear to be variants of a portrait in the
National Portrait Gallery, London (above) which is signed 'HE' and dated 1554 at the top left. However, after Mary I's death and the change of the political and religious atmosphere with the accession of
Elizabeth I, Eworth in 1560 painted the Protestant Martyr
Anne Askew, burned at the stake on charges of heresy. Over the next decade, Eworth continued to paint portraits of the aristocracy, including paired portraits of
Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk and his
second wife and of the
Earl and Countess of Moray. Despite the frequent appearance of a characteristic "HE" monogram, the attribution of works to Eworth—and the identification of his sitters—remains in flux. A well-known painting identified by
George Vertue in 1727 as
Lady Frances Brandon and her second husband Adrian Stokes has now been correctly identified as
Mary Nevill, Baroness Dacre and her son
Gregory Fiennes, 10th Baron Dacre. The allegorical painting
Elizabeth I and the Three Goddesses (1569), with its slightly different "HE" monogram, has been variously attributed by Sir
Roy Strong as cautiously to "The Monogrammist HE" in 1969 it is now accepted as the work of Eworth. Eworth's last known works date from 1570 to 1573. Like many other
artists of the Tudor court, Eworth was also engaged in decorative work; he was involved in the set design for a
masque given by Elizabeth I in honor of the French Ambassador in 1572. Payment records show that Eworth was designing for the
Office of the Revels as late as 1573, and he is believed to have died in 1574. ==Gallery==