THIS article brings together for analysis as far as possible all the extant documentary evidence concerning the lives and work of Gerard Horenbout or Hornebolt and his son and daughter Lucas and Susanna, a family of artists of Netherlandish origin, all of whom were at some time in the second quarter of the sixteenth century resident in England. Susanna in particular has received little attention, and the references to her are more numerous and substantial than has hitherto been realised, while the references in Netherlandish documents to Gerard's work have not before been brought together with those referring to his career in England. The full text of a neglected document which appears to describe several works by Lucas Horenbout is published in the Appendix; one of these works, it is here argued, may be linked with a woodcut design (Fig. 15) previously associated with Hans Holbein the Younger.

THAT there are a great many English portraits which defy attribution is evident from country house collections and routine sales of British pictures. Equally, documentary sources disclose the names of not a few painters to whom nothing can be ascribed. Identifying the authorship of English portraits, especially those by secondary or obviously provincial hands, can often be frustrated by the apparently complete disappearance of any record of an artist's existence or of any work to which a name can be attached. It may, therefore, be of some significance when one such painter emerges from virtually total obscurity, however elusively. A portrait painter, active around the middle years of the seventeenth century towards the end of the Commonwealth period and about the time of the Restoration, whose work is signed 'W. Baylis', affords an example of the kind of 'rediscovery' that occasionally occurs. From the style of three portraits certainly by the artist which are reproduced here, it is possible to establish the personality of a modestly accomplished painter whose manner seems to have been formed on the fashionable example set by Robert Walker in the 1650s, while from the identities of the sitters (together with that of a fourth picture known to exist but which cannot at present be traced) some idea of the patrons for whom Baylis seems to have worked might be deduced.

IN 1698-99 the young 'Hofbaumeister und Ingenieur' at the Electoral Brandenburg-Prussian Court of Berlin, Christian Eltester (1671-1700), made a tour of Holland, England, and France, having been in Italy from 1690 to 1696. He arrived in London from Amsterdam in November 1698. Here, according to the biography, appended to the printed sermon given at his funeral by Philipp Jacob Spener:

IN 1798 a book of architectural plans and elevations of existing and proposed buildings appeared in Leipzig and Paris as Les Plans et Desseins tirés de la Belle Architecture. The publishers were Voss et Compagnie and it contained an introductory essay by the Leipzig classicist and architectural historian Christian Stieglitz. Its authorship has since been given to the latter on the strength of this essay though it was in fact little more than a precis of the first chapter of his Geschichted er Baukunstd er Alten, published in Leipzig in 1796. A more intriguing aspect of the book is the problematic authorship of the various schemes that make up a large part of the work and are signed by the draughtsman and engraver alone. It now seems clear that the anonymous designer was the seventh Earl of Findlater and Seafield, a Scottish peer of dubious reputation, who conducted a ramshackle architectural career from self-imposed exile in Dresden.

IN 1976 the Towner Art Gallery in Eastbourne received a generous bequest of pictures from the collection of Mrs Irene Law, a descendant of the Hope family, of whom the connoisseur and collector Thomas Hope of Deepdene (1769-1831) is best known to art historians. Several of the items are probably from earlier family collections, but it is known that she also purchased works. As, however, no documentation accompanied the bequest, provenances are hard to establish.

AT the time of a major exhibition of his work in the United States, it may be appropriate to take stock of Richard Long's sculpture by drawing attention to two commissions which he has completed recently, Six stone circles (Fig.37) for a private collector in England, and Bordeaux slate line (Fig.36) for a museum in the south of France. To the initiative of these patrons in providing a contemporary artist with a rare opportunity for installing a work permanently in a reserved site Richard Long has responded triumphantly, creating two of his most compelling pieces.

'BEARE'S biography can only be inferred from his portraits.' So writes John Kerslake in a recent article, yet in fact a few, albeit faltering steps have been taken to challenge this statement. It has long been accepted that Beare was mainly active in the Salisbury area during the 1740s, but more recently Sir Ellis Waterhouse argued that the painter may well have been trained at the St Martin's Lane Academy. The fact that fresh evidence suggests that Beare was living in Salisbury as early as 1738 contradicts neither of these viewpoints, merely fuelling speculation concerning his earlier years and activities. In that year, a 'Mr Beer' was assessed at ten shillings on a house with '12 windows' in New Street Ward. Two years later, his name again appeared in the tax assessment, but on this occasion in Mead Ward. Then it disappears from the records until 1746, when the painter wrote to Sir Alexander Powell, then living at Castle Street, Salisbury. This letter, partly quoted by Collins Baker, deserves to be reproduced in full, particularly as its present whereabouts is unknown. It appears to be the sole known letter from the painter to a patron, and is addressed to a member of the family who are among his earliest known Wiltshire sitters.