Erasmus of Rotterdam

Thomas Churchyard 1798-1865, was an English painter and Lawyer. Churchyard was predominantly a landscape painter in oil and watercolour, however he was educated at the same school as John Constable and lived in Suffolk in Woodbridge close to Constable's home. Consequently Churchyard grew up wanting to be a painter but was realistic enough to train as a Lawyer and to supplement his artistic ambitions with his income from his legal practice. Churchyard was a very competent and ambitious scholar and resided with the schoolmaster being the most promising pupil, he was a gifted student in the classics, French, the poets, and religious speculation among other subjects. Due to his study of religious speculation he became knowledgeable of Erasmus and therefore painted this picture in honour of the greatest mind of the late 15th and early 16th Centuries. Churchyard was frustrated in his ambition to become a professionally active artist and travelled to London to achieve his goal but failed and returned to Woodbridge to continue in his legal profession. This portrait is very well executed study of the Holbein original and I think worthy of the title he desired, professionally accomplished artist.