John de Critz was born in Antwerp in 1551. His father was Troilus de Critz, a goldsmith. His parents brought him as a boy to England to escape the Habsburg persecution of the Dutch Protestants and apprenticed him to the Ghent-born artist and poet Lucas de Heere, who may also have taught members of the Gheeraerts family and Robert Peake as well. In the period 1582-88 de Critz was employed by Sir Francis Walsingham, spymaster and eminence grise to Queen Elizabeth I. A sole portrait of Walsingham survives and does so in various versions, two of which are dated 1587 and 1589. The finest version may be seen in the National Portrait Gallery in London and is presumed to have been painted by de Critz during his journeys to and from Paris whilst engaged on business for Walsingham. The other painting securely identified as being by de Critz is that of Robert Cecil, future 1st Earl of Salisbury, of which numerous versions also survive. De Critz had firmly established himself as an independent artist by the late 1590s, and in 1603, he was appointed serjeant-painter to King James I, at first jointly with Leonard Fryer and from 1610 jointly with Robert Peake the Elder. The role of serjeant painter was somewhat elastic in its definition of duties; it not only involved the painting of original portraits, copying and restoring, but also the production of numerous copies of standard portraits for presentation as gifts and for transmission to foreign embassies. De Critz’s work, traced through his bills, also entailed the restoration of decorative detail, the painting and gilding of royal coaches and barges, and individual tasks such as painting the signs and letters on a royal sun-dial. Although de Critz is known to have been a prolific painter, few surviving works have been clearly identified as his. The National Portrait Gallery in London has six paintings in its collection, which are believed to have been painted by de Critz. Portrait painters of the Elizabethan and Jacobean period present peculiar difficulties in this respect, since they often made multiple versions not only of their own paintings, but of those of their predecessors and contemporaries, rarely signed their work and shared poses. Art historian Sir John Rothenstein summed up the problem: ‘To make definitive attributions is a difficult undertaking. This is due to a variety of causes, the most important being the practice of successful painters of employing assistants. Another confusing factor is the tendency on the part of members of the artistic families to intermarry with one another; Marc Gheeraerts the elder and his son and namesake, for example, both married sisters of John de Critz. Similarities of style were also encouraged by legislation, and painters were for a time forbidden to portray the Queen pending the painting of a portrait such as might be taken as a model to be copied. His portrait of Queen Anne of Denmark may be seen above.  The Dutch exiles from the religious upheavals in their homeland established their own community in London, shared materials, took each other’s children as servants or apprentices and intermarried. In 1604 de Critz and his family were naturalised. At this distance of time, it is not certain which part of London he had his studio, but it is known that he moved to the parish of St Martin-in-the-Fields before his death in 1642. He stated in his will that he had previously lived for 30 years in the parish of St Andrew, Holborn. Horace Walpole notes George Vertue’s comment that there were three rooms full of the King’s pictures at de Critz’s house in Austin-friars. De Critz is entered in a subsidy roll for the parish of St Sepulchre-without-Newgate in 1607 and again in 1625; and since that parish adjoins St Andrew, Holborn, it is possible that he had his studio in St Sepulchre. De Critz’s eldest son John, Thomas (born 1607) and Emanuel (born 1608) were also painters. Walpole unfairly wrote of de Critz: ‘His life is to be collected rather from office-books than from his works or his reputation’. Art historian William Gaunt (1900-80) amusingly and foolishly described de Critz’s role as ‘mainly that of a handyman’. A editorial of April 1944 observed en passant: ‘A great deal of easy fun has been poked at the institution of the serjeant-painters, because these had to attend to tasks such as downright house-painting, the painting of barges and coaches, the provision of banners and streamers, and so on.’