A Man in a Black Cap
- Artist: John Bettes
- Date: 1545
- Medium: Oil paint on oak
- Dimensions: support: 470 x 410 mm
- Museum: Tate Britain
- Collection record: Tate Britain website
Listen to the free audio guide
About this artwork
This is the “A Man in a Black Cap” by John Bettes, painted in 1545. It’s the earliest picture in the Tate collection, a subtle portrait that gives us a glimpse of Tudor England. Bettes signed the panel on the back in French, a rare thing for British painters of the time, and the front bears a faint inscription that the work was finished “in the year of our Lord 1545” and that the sitter was 26.
The sitter’s face is calm, a beard neatly trimmed, and he wears a black cap and a modest collar. The background was originally a deep blue made with smalt, but the pigment has faded to a ginger‑brown over the centuries. The panel has been cut down from its original size, so what we see now is the central portion of a larger composition.
Bettes was active at Henry VIII’s court from at least 1531 and may have worked with the great German portraitist Hans Holbein the Younger. Some scholars suggest the man could be Edmund Butts, a younger son of the king’s physician, which would explain the family connection that brought the work to Brome Hall in Suffolk before it entered the National Gallery and, later, Tate.
Overall, this portrait is a quiet but vital record of a 16th‑century Englishman, and the signature on the back makes it a rare and valuable insight into early British portraiture.
See it in person
A Man in a Black Cap is in the collection of Tate Britain on Millbank, London — free to enter. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
