Sir George Carew (1504–1545)

Sir George Carew, painted around 1540, belongs to Holbein's documentation of the Tudor naval establishment — Carew was a prominent naval commander who died at the sinking of the Mary Rose in 1545. His portrait, painted five years before his death, shows a man in his prime whose professional confidence is visible in his bearing and expression. Holbein's naval and military portraits have a distinctive quality: the directness appropriate to men of action, the absence of the bookish apparatus that characterized his humanist portraits. Sir George Carew looks out with the frank assurance of a man who commands in a physical world rather than the world of ideas, and Holbein captures that difference without diminishing his subject's humanity.

Oil on canvas, the portrait demonstrates Hans Holbein the Younger's command of psychological penetration and precise draftsmanship. The careful modeling of the face reveals close study of the sitter's physiognomy, while the treatment of costume and setting projects appropriate social standing.