cles in England,
Flanders, and Germany. He had lived for some time in England and knew
that there were men there with wealth who would employ a good painter
to paint their portraits if they could find one. Erasmus himself sat
to Holbein, and sent the finished portrait as a present to his friend
Sir Thomas More, Lord Chancellor of England.

In England, owing to the effects of the Wars of the Roses, good painters
no longer existed. A century of neglect had destroyed English painting.
Henry VIII., therefore, had to look to foreign lands for his court
painter, and where was he to come from? France was the nearest country,
but the French King was in the same predicament as Henry. He obtained
his painters from Italy, and at one time secured the services of
Leonardo da Vinci; but Italy was a long way off and it would suit Henry
better to get a painter from Flanders or Germany if it were possible.
So Erasmus advised Holbein to go to England, and gave him a letter
to Sir Thomas More. On this first visit in 1526, he painted the
portraits of More and his whole family, and of many other distinguished
men; but it was not till his second visit in 1532 that he became Henry
VIII.'s court painter. In this capacity he had to decorate the walls
of the King's palaces, design the pageantry of the Royal processions,
and paint the portraits of the King's family. Although Holbein could
do and did do anything that was demanded of him, what he liked best
was to paint portraits. Romantic subjects such as the fight of St.
George and the dragon, or an idyll of the Golden Age, little suited
the artistic leanings of a German. To a German or a Fleming the world
of facts meant more than the world of imagination; the painting of
men and women as they looked in everyday life was more congenial to
them than the painting of saints and imaginary princesses.

But how unimportant seems all talk of contrasting imagination and
reality when we see them fused together in this charming portrait of
Edward, the child Prince of Wales. It belongs to the end of the year
1538, when he was just fifteen months old, and the imagination of
Holbein equipped him with the orb of sovereignty in the guise of a
baby's rattle. It is in the coupling of distant kingship and present
babyhood that the painter works his magic and reveals his charm.

[Illustration: EDWARD, PRINCE OF WALES, AFTERWARDS EDWARD VI.
From the picture by Holbein, in the Collection of the Earl of Yarborough,