Portraits of Edward Holte (1600-1643) and his wife Elizabeth (née King)

Cornelius Johnson (1593 - 1661)

Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery

circa 1636

The Holtes were one of the leading landed gentry families of Birmingham. They built Aston Hall, and played a major role in the politics and history of the area, especially during the Civil War. The family were Royalists and Edward Holte was wounded at Edge Hill in 1642 and died during the siege of Oxford in 1643. These portraits have now been returned to Aston Hall where they join other ancestral portraits of the family. The sitters are depicted with an informality of dress and the self revealing gaze which made the artist a pioneer of the English School of portraiture.

• Medium: oil on canvas
• Dimensions: each 76 x 63.5cm
• Art Fund Grant: £17000 ( Total: £46,800)
• ArtFunded in: 2006
• Vendor: Lane Fine Art

Provenance

By descent to Sire Lister Holte, 5th Baronet; whose neice and eventual heir married Abraham Bracebridge of Atherstone (1775); Charles Holte Bracebridge, their son (b.1776); Charles Holte Bracebridge (1799-1872) with whom the line becomes extinct; Lady Villiers-Lister; Lane Fine Art, London.

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