The painting of the beautiful plumage of the bird is a most masterly piece of work, and the keen, piercing eyes and clean-cut face of its master are rendered with that unerring truth and wonderful insight which give Holbein his foremost place among the supreme painters of portraits. [Sidenote: PORTRAIT OF ROBERT CHESEMAN] This picture was seen by Sir Joshua Reynolds during his tour through Flanders and Holland in 1781, and in his diary he describes it as:—“A portrait by Holbein; admirable for its truth and precision and extremely well coloured. The blue flat ground which is behind the head gives a general effect of dryness to the picture: had the ground been varied, and made to harmonize more with the figure, this portrait might have stood in competition with the works of the best portrait painters.”[115] This accusation of a slight “dryness” is to some extent true of certain, though by no means all, of the portraits painted by Holbein in England, when compared with some of his earlier work done in Basel. It has been suggested that this may have been due to a growing habit, caused by the increasing demands made upon his time, of placing greater reliance on his preliminary chalk studies in painting a portrait, and thereby reducing the number of sittings given him by the actual model.[116] Footnote 115: _A Journey to Flanders and Holland in the year 1781._ Works, vol. ii. Footnote 116: Wornum, p. 251-2. An old copy of this portrait was lent to the Tudor Exhibition, 1890 (No. 173A), by the Rev. Charles Shepherd. The original picture was once in the royal collections of England. It was No. 8 on the list of objects of art which Queen Anne reclaimed from the Dutch States at the death of William III as having formed part of the collection belonging to the English royal house. Her claim was unsuccessful, and the picture remained in Holland. On the back of the panel are the letters W.E.H.P.L.C. and the seal of Johan Willem Friso, Prince of Orange-Nassau, in whose collection it was, and afterwards in that of William V. The second fine portrait of a man with a hawk in the Hague Gallery,[117] dated 1542, was another of the pictures claimed by Anne, and was No. 21 in her list. A third picture in the Hague, the beautiful portrait of a young woman[118] (No. 275), now considered to represent Holbein’s wife, has been already described. The Cheseman and the 1542 portrait were evidently taken over to Holland, with other paintings, by William III during one of his visits to the Hague. Footnote 117: See p. 203. Footnote 118: See Vol. i. p. 106.