Steven van der Meulen

Netherlandish painter, active in England. He was a pupil of Willem van Cleve the younger (c. 1530-1564) in 1543 and was admitted to the Antwerp Guild of St Luke in 1552; by 1560 he had travelled to London, and he was naturalized in 1562. Van der Meulen brought with him a deep knowledge of the portrait style of Anthonis Mor. This sombre, shadowed style appealed to patrons at the English court who could not travel to Antwerp to sit to the greater artist. Early in 1561 an English merchant, John Dymoch, had visited Sweden in connection with negotiations for a marriage between Queen Elizabeth and Erik XIV, taking with him a Netherlandish painter described as 'Master Staffan', and it seems likely that this was van der Meulen. The King was much pleased with the resulting portrait of himself, for which he paid 100 daler; it was presented to the Queen in June. Its subsequent fate in England is not known, but it has been plausibly identified with a full-length at Gripsholm Castle, Mariefred, near Stockholm. In England van der Meulen seems to have been extensively patronized by the collector John, 1st Baron Lumley, and his circle and can safely be identified with the 'famous paynter Steven' who appears in the Lumley inventory of 1590; this lists portraits that are presumably the Lord Lumley aged 30 and his first wife Jane Fitzalan, Lady Lumley, aged 27 (both dated 8 May 1563; Sandbeck Park, N. Yorks) that were noted in 1735 by George Vertue. There are portraits in British collections attributed to Steven van der Meulen, e. g. that of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester (two versions, one New Haven, Yale Center for British Art). No work has been identified after 1568, when his dated portrait of Thomas Wentworth, 2nd Baron Wentworth of Nettlestead (London, National Portrait Gallery; formerly attributed to Hans Eworth ) was painted.

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