Ellen Maurice
After Marcus Gheerhaerts, 1597. Oil on Birchwood panel.
16 inches x 22. Detail, bottom right.
*Available. Price on request.

Born in Bruges, Belgium, he moved to London with his father, Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder, in 1568 to escape religious persecution. He became a leading society and court portraitist in the 1590s under the patronage of Sir Henry Lee and Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex. After the death of Queen Elizabeth I, he served as the preferred painter to Queen Anne of Denmark (wife of King James I) in the early 1600s.