No one would mistake an artist with a name like Hans Holbein for an Englishman. Yet, as Susan Foister’s new book sets out to demonstrate, Holbein the Younger not only flourished during his tenure in England but also produced works integrally connected to the artistic context of the Tudor period. In Holbein and England, Foister hopes to revise common assumptions by reframing the artist geographically, arguing that Holbein’s experiences in Germany informed his English work and that early-sixteenth-century England was no backwater for the visual arts.

Misconceptions and unfamiliarity have assured a dearth of literature about English art of the early modern era. Almost without exception, the rare gems in this cavern are studies concerning Holbein. Further, like Roy Strong’s writings and, more recently, Stephanie Buck’s work, scholarship tends to focus on Holbein’s employment at the English court and on his most famous patron there—the brash, burly Henry VIII. Foister’s text also centers on the canonical artist; however, it also makes a unique contribution to our body of knowledge by expanding the backdrop of English court and country into a subject worthy of art-historical consideration in its own right. Herein lies both the chief merit and greatest challenge of Holbein and England.

In the first two chapters, Foister offers parallel introductions. Chapter 1, built largely on hypotheses in lieu of concrete documentation, is a fairly standard review of Holbein’s training and working practices. In contrast, chapter 2 uses previously unknown wills, probate inventories, and letters to offer readers a surprising description of Henrician England as a place where religious images were pervasive, domestic spaces were decorated, paintings were in demand, and art—in a variety of forms—was valued. Emphasizing the “multimedia” skills required of the Tudor artist—Holbein, for instance, painted miniatures and murals in addition to panels, and designed metalwork, jewelry, and prints—Foister introduces native English artists, including John Brown and Andrew Wright, and sheds new light on the careers of other foreigners at court, such as Lucas Horenbout.

Ironically, rather than enhancing our understanding of Holbein’s achievements, as Foister intends, the examination of art and the artist in England that begins in chapter 2 and continues in chapter 3 creates a sense of tension and disconnection that runs throughout the remainder of the book. As she trumpets the skill and rank of some of Holbein’s peers in the artistic community, the author risks making her focus on Holbein seem arbitrary. On the other hand, by highlighting Holbein and his unsurpassed mastery of the arts, Foister confirms the belief that English artists (especially compared to foreign painters) possessed insufficient talent to meet the needs of local patrons, thus validating the anonymity of the very artists she has newly exhumed.

Among the primary arguments made in Holbein and England is the suggestion that Holbein took Continental forms and shaped them according to the interests of his English patrons, a testament to the artist’s talent and adaptability. Although she sometimes goes overboard, proffering tenuous comparisons (e.g., the portrait of Dirck Tybis and the Salvator Mundi), for the most part Foister ably demonstrates Holbein’s reliance on and transformation of Northern European sources in his English work. This is done with particular skill in her examination of Holbein’s Old and New Law and other religious work in England, where she demonstrates compositional precedents and carefully assesses points of similarity and divergence about the emerging English Reformation in art.

Foister’s integration of Netherlandish and German works and her ability to describe images in vivid detail enable her to place Holbein’s English creations firmly within the mainstream of Northern European artistic culture of the period. She is less convincing, however, in her declarations regarding the innovative nature of Holbein’s English works. The artist’s supreme facility with brush as well as pen and chalk is undeniable, but evidence testifying to the “imagination” and “inventiveness” of Holbein’s art in England is lacking. Not only are Holbein’s patrons and collaborators consistently credited with providing the content and concepts behind his work, but the demands of his English audience, as presented by the author, also seem to have called for unremarkable responses as often as not.

Holbein and England generally reduces the motives of the artist’s patrons to simple, uncomplicated, and mundane concerns: legacy, piety, mortality, display. Although these themes have received little recognition in scholarship concerning English art, they are by now assumed starting points for most investigations into Continental art of the period. Foister thus makes a necessary and significant step in advancing the study of art in early modern England. However, because of the author’s reluctance to attend to the social, political, or religious contexts for art, her book fails to yield the kind of deeper insight into art’s meaning and the artist’s role that many readers will want. We are left begging answers to countless, more involved questions, such as: What caused the particular English penchant for things Netherlandish? (Why) did the British school fail to meet the needs of the English elite? How did Holbein emerge as a leading portraitist in England, when portraiture had previously played a minor role in his oeuvre? Why didn’t he produce a greater number of religious works if such objects were, according to documents, still in demand? How did the king and his courtiers imagine themselves within the international community? And how did Holbein help to facilitate the creation of English court culture and identity?

Foister’s strength in Holbein and England lies in her well-supported, carefully considered conclusions regarding dates, physical locations, portrait identities, and ownership records. Technical evidence, gleaned through processes like X-radiography and infrared reflectography, and revelations about the material world, drawn from the archives—combined with the author’s keen eye and enriched by sumptuous color reproductions—make the book a successful, informational endeavor. This study could ultimately become a springboard for scholars more interested in art’s sociohistoric life than its connoisseurial status and iconographic sources.

Holbein and England also deserves praise for its attempts to incorporate a variety of patronage sources and a diversity of artistic media. Chapter 3 is especially welcome for drawing our attention to the ephemeral arts of spectacle and the oft-neglected decorative arts of metalwork and jewelry design. In wonderfully detailed descriptions of court revels (chapter 3) and astute observations regarding differences between Holbein’s portraits of Hanseatic merchants and English courtiers (chapter 5), the potential of Foister’s book is realized.

Unfortunately, the tome lacks even coverage and consistent treatment of its varied subject matter. The result is a montage in which relationships among Holbein’s clients are unclear, where painting retains its privileged status, and where the dialogue among media remains largely, though not entirely, unexplored.

Foister proposes to write a book that uses Holbein to bring England into the fold of Northern European art history and to use Holbein’s English work to validate his place in the pantheon of Renaissance masters. She falls short of this aim. Holbein stands out as something of an exception in England. There is little here to convince readers that the English equaled their Continental counterparts in artistic acuity, or that Holbein revolutionized art in England to the degree that “by the end of the 16th century … [his] work made London the focus of a kind of cultural tourism that developed in Europe during the previous decades” (265). Nonetheless, Holbein and England affirms and expands our appreciation for the artist and sets the stage for what could be an exciting new future for studies of early modern English art.