Singularly few examples remain of work executed by Holbein in 1534 and 1535. There are no dated portraits from his brush of the former year, with the exception of the two small roundels in Vienna, and none of the latter year, for the date on the beautiful miniature of little Henry Brandon at Windsor, usually given as 1535, has been misread.[132] There are one or two portraits which must have been done during this period, among them the Morette, the drawing of Nicolas Bourbon, and a portrait of Nicholas Poyns the younger; but there are so few examples which can be definitely given to these two years that the writer hazards the conjecture that for a part of the time Holbein was out of England. Throughout his too short career the painter seems never to have severed his connection with Basel, nor to have broken the friendly relationships which existed between him and its Council. He remained a citizen of his adopted city, and apparently retained his membership of the Painters’ Guild, until his death. To do so he must have paid some heed to the somewhat strict laws as to the duties of citizenship then in force. The customary leave of absence was about two years, and Holbein may well have returned to Basel more often than is generally supposed. He did not accede to the Council’s request contained in their letter of September 2nd, 1532, but at the end of two years, in the summer of 1534, he may possibly have paid a visit of some duration to Switzerland, returning to England in the summer or autumn of 1535. This is only conjecture, for there is no evidence of his presence in Basel during that period, but it would account for the lack of English portraits of that date, and would also help to explain the fact—in some ways inexplicable—that he did not enter the service of the royal house of England until about 1536. Against this assumption it must be noted that when he paid his well-known visit to Basel in September 1538 he was feasted and fêted by his fellow-citizens in a way which seems to indicate that he had been absent for a longer period than three years. Still, it is not impossible that he was there in 1534-5, and that he even paid a final visit home, about the winter of 1540-41, before his death in 1543, in this way retaining until the end his citizenship and the pension paid by the Basel authorities to his wife. Footnote 132: See p. 225. [Illustration: VOL. II., PLATE 12 CHARLES DE SOLIER, SIEUR DE MORETTE ROYAL PICTURE GALLERY, DRESDEN ]