Style of the Master of Dreux Budé; Étienne Colaud
10.12.2025 12:00UTC +00:00
Classic
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ID 1514459
Lot 53 | Style of the Master of Dreux Budé; Étienne Colaud
Estimate value
100000GBP £ 100 000 – 150 000
The Cromer Book of Hours, in Latin and French, use of Paris adapted to use of Sarum, illuminated manuscript on vellum [Paris, c.1465 and c.1526]
A gift of love: the reappearance of the Hours of Walter Cromer, physician to Henry VIII, and his wife, Alice, the imitative section added to the Aspremont Hours of c.1300, with miniatures in the style of the Master of Dreux Budé, with additions by Étienne Colaud and marginalia that are possibly Cromer’s own ‘handie work’.
206 x 145mm. 84 leaves: first nine leaves unfoliated, then numbered I-76, omitting 37: 13(added, i pastedown), 26, 39(of 8 + i, v with later text and decoration), 43(?i-iii of 8?), 58(added replacement), 64(?i possibly from gathering 4, others later replacements), 77(of 8, lacking i, now f.39), 84(of 6 lacking v-vi), 95(?of 4, later addition, + iv, misbound from before f.24 in gathering 7), 108, 119(of 8 + iv, later addition), 12-138, 143, 18 lines, ruled space, slightly variable: c. 134 x 89mm, some line-endings with beasts and dragons, bar borders on nearly every page, many with drolleries, eleven original miniatures above large initials, with bar borders to three sides, two half-page added miniatures painted over text, seven full-page added miniatures, one painted over text (some bar borders slightly trimmed, wear to several original miniatures, specially ff.1, 39v and 53, some with details re-defined in ink and possible retouching, erasure of text damaging vellum, f.39v, and affecting lower part of added miniature on recto, 20th-century repainting of St Helena over iconoclastic damage f.52v). 20th-century binding of red velvet over wooden boards (rubbed).
Provenance:
(1) The book was designed to supplement the Hours section of a Psalter-Hours of c.1300 probably made in Lorraine for Joffroy d’Aspremont and his wife, Isabelle de Kievraing. The Psalter section with Calendar, the Aspremont Psalter, was bound separately in the 14th or 15th century and is now Bodleian Library, MS Douce 118; the Hours, the Aspremont Hours, with offices for five feasts of the Virgin, is now Melbourne, National Gallery of Victoria, MS Felton 171/3. The leaves of what became the Cromer Hours were bound at the front of the Aspremont Hours to provide a new calendar, featuring Parisian saints, including in gold Genevieve (3 Jan.), also in the litany, and Marcel (3 Nov.), the Offices of the Virgin and of the Dead for the Use of Paris and other standard texts. The style of the miniatures, that of the Master of Dreux Budé, supports an origin in Paris, datable c.1465. It was probably at this stage that most of the coats of arms in the Aspremont Hours were overpainted with arabesques, indicating that the commissioner had neither a connection with the Aspremonts nor a coat of arms.
(2) Dr Walter Abercrombie or Cromer (d.1547), and his wife Alice Whethill (d. by Jan. 1557), of Wood Street, London: the book seems principally hers since she recorded their marriage on 6 August 1528, pastedown, and the book was passed on to her daughter and then granddaughter, in both cases bypassing sons. The births of the Cromers’ six children 1531-1545 follow, pastedown and verso of end leaf; his coat of arms is on versos before calendar and f.1 and on ff.12, 20v, 23, 35v, 39, 39v, 40, 52v: argent a chevron gules between three boars' heads erased sable, differencing the azure usual for Abercrombie boars; boars appear on ff.12v, 15, 20 and 20v; Walter and/or Alice appear in the miniatures listed below and in the borders of ff.21v-22. The Scot Abercrombie, from the diocese of St Andrew’s, anglicised his name to Cromer on his denization in 1522: the first two miniatures show him before the patron saints of England and Scotland. In 1523 he went to Paris to study medicine and had obtained his degree by September 1528: he appears before St Catherine, patron of scholars, f.31. He presumably acquired the Aspremont Hours in Paris and personally commissioned his alterations and additions to the 15th-century section from Étienne Colaud c.1526, the date on f.26v.
Cromer, Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians from 1530, was advanced by Thomas Cromwell, who stood godfather to his son Thomas in January 1540, the godmother being Lady Margaret Douglas, daughter of Henry VIII’s sister, Margaret, widow of James IV of Scotland (first endleaf). Cromer had attended her in 1536/7 and in 1538 he was appointed one of Henry VIII’s physicians, retaining his post despite Cromwell’s fall. Some of his treatments ‘that might do Your most excellent Majesty good’, are preserved in a treatise bound for Edward VI (Yale Medical Historical Library, MS 17 vault); others were included in a compilation for, and by, Henry VIII (BL, Sloane MS 1047). Cromer’s will, invoking the Virgin’s intercession, is not indicative of Protestant leanings but Thomas Becket’s name in the calendar (30 Dec.) was obscured in accordance with Henry VIII’s 1538 decree; St Helena, f.52v, was presumably defaced by a later owner (Millar, 1926). By Cromer’s death in 1547, he and his wife had acquired various formerly church lands in London and elsewhere to be inherited by their only surviving son, Thomas (James, 1934; J. Durkan, ‘Scottish “Evangelicals” in the Patronage of Thomas Cromwell', The Records of the. Scottish Church History Society, 21 (1981-3), 127-136.
Alice Whethill’s family came from Sheepy Magna and Sheepy Parva, Leicestershire. Her brother Thomas, godfather to William Cromer in 1533, held lands there; by 1619 his descendants were using a variant of the arms of John Whethill of Sheepy (d. 1536), probably Alice’s uncle or great-uncle and representative of the principal line (Harleian Society, Visitation of the County of Leicestershire 1619, pp.44-5). Alice appears with only her husband’s arms, ff.35v, 39 and 52v, suggesting that in the 1520s the status of her branch was less assured. Her, presumably younger, brother Richard was not ranked in 1540 with the Lord Cromwell as godfather but was to be ‘at bisshop’, an official representative at Thomas’s confirmation. Perhaps helped by the network revealed by the Cromer children’s godparents, Richard prospered in London as a member of the Merchant Taylors, becoming their Master in 1562, and by the 1540s was a Merchant of the Staple at Calais (W. G. Davis, The Ancestry of Mary Isaac, c. 1549-1613, 1955, pp.263, 295). He died in 1566 when Thomas Cromer was one of his beneficiaries (National Archives, PROB 11/48/476).
Left a wealthy widow with young children, Alice married William Huys, physician to Mary I from 1553. In 1552 they were jointly granted wardship of Thomas Cromer; by January 1557 Alice had died and Huys was married to Margaret Atkyns (R.R. James, ‘Thomas Huys, M.D. Physician to Μary Tudor’, Janus, 40, 1936, pp.171-177). Huys dying in 1558, it was Margaret and her new husband, Stephen Hadnoll, who held the wardship of Thomas at his majority in 1561. Thomas has not been traced after 1566.
(3) Elizabeth Cromer (b.1536), probably the Cromers’ eldest surviving daughter: note by Elizabeth’s son-in-law, Brian Tuke on verso of first endleaf of her marriage to William Pennant (of Hornchurch, d.1595); records of the births of their children Mary in 1576 and Piers in 1580, on recto before the calendar.
(4) Mary Pennant (b.1576): records by Brian Tuke of his marriage to Mary in 1594 and the births of their children 1595-1602, recto of inserted miniature leaf after the calendar.
(5) Their son, Morrice Tuke (b.1595): he recorded, on what is now f.139v of the Aspremont Hours, his marriage with Marie Amie Kempe in 1623, her death in 1629 and the births of their four daughters 1624-1629.
(6) The volume may have passed to Morrice’s brother, George Tuke (b.1597), since a possible sequence of inheritance can be traced from George’s illegitimate daughter, Catherine, who married Richard Bettenson (d.1624), and from the Bettensons through the Selwyns to the Townshends. After the death of the Hon. Robert Marsham Townshend (1834-1914), heir to his childless uncle, John Townshend, 3rd Viscount and Ist Earl Sydney (1805-1890), the Aspremont-Cromer Hours appeared as lot 1671 in the Catalogue of the Sydney Collection at Frognal, Chislehurst, Kent, Knight, Frank and Rutley, 7 June 1915, achieving the very high price of 775 guineas.
(7) The volume was then divided: the Aspremont Hours was acquired for Melbourne at Christie’s, 2 March 1922, lot 138; the Cromer Hours was offered by Myers and Co, Catalogue 234, 1922, no 188; Catalogue 270, 1929, no 185; Catalogue 300, 1934, no 196, and disappeared from view in a private collection. Although mentioned in many publications on the Aspremont Psalter-Hours, the Cromer Hours has been known chiefly through Millar’s 1926 publication, where its full complexity was not recognised.
Content:
Cromer and Pennant records 1528-1580, pastedown and recto of inserted miniature leaf; Calendar for the use of Paris, six unfoliated leaves; Tuke records 1594-1602, recto of inserted miniature leaf; Office of the Virgin, use of Paris modified to Sarum, interspersed with added Hours of the Cross, where available blank lines permitted, ff.1-34v: matins, ff.1-7, with opening lines rewritten and replacement leaves ff.2 and 5; lauds followed by memorials ff.7-20, with replacement leaves ff.12-19, original final text at lauds obscured by added miniature, f.20; prime ff.20-23: opening rewritten to include opening of Ps. 53, f.20, which continues f.21, added miniature obscuring original text f.20v, replacement leaves ff. 21-23; terce (erased opening now f.39), ff.24-25v; sext, ff.26-27v; none, ff.28-30; vespers, ff.30-31v; compline, ff.32-34v; added Salve regina and Gaude virgo Maria, ff.36-38v (foliation omitted 37); misbound leaf with original end of prime obscured by added miniatures and beginning of terce erased, f.39; Penitential Psalms and Litany ff.41-51v; Hours of the Cross ff.53-55; Hours of the Holy Spirit, ff.55v-57; Office of the Dead, use of Paris, ff.57-76.
Cromer did not have the Office of the Virgin completely converted from Paris to Sarum use and other Paris texts remained unaltered. Although the 15th-century additions included the Hours of the Cross, Cromer wanted the text repeated in its usual Sarum position but without adding extra leaves, possibly the sign of a late decision.
Illumination:
The 15th-century owner of the Aspremont Hours showed an exceptional respect for the appearance of the past in having the original layout and border decoration so faithfully imitated. The outmoded historiated initials, however, were abandoned for miniatures, commissioned in the fashionably Netherlandish style of the Master of Dreux Budé. Named from panels painted for Charles VII’s influential secretary, the Master was also active as an illuminator and was a determining influence on the Coëtivy Master, named from the Hours of Olivier de Coëtivy (Vienna, ÖNB, cod.1929). If the two Masters are correctly identified as André d’Ypres (d.1450), active In Amiens and from c.1445 in Paris, and his son, Colin d’Amiens, documented in Paris 1461-1488, the Dreux Budé Master must have had a close follower who continued to work in his style through the 1450s and into the 1460s (exh. cat. Les arts en France sous Charles VII, Paris, Musée du Cluny, 2024, pp.212-213, 220-227). The Hours of Isabelle de Roubaix (Roubaix, Médiathèque, ms 6) has been dated to c.1465 and credited to such a follower (N. Reynaud in Les manuscrits à peintures en France 1440-1520, 1993, pp.57-8).
For the Cromer Hours, the dress of the mourning lady, f.57, indicates a similar date in the mid to late 1460s. Connections with works attributed to the Budé Master in the 1450s include his distinctive female type, e.g. ff.28, 52, and the frequent somewhat oblong-headed men with uncertain junctures between chin and beard. These types, together with the forcefully sparse compositions and strong vertical accents, are also evident in his miniatures in a Speculum humane salvationis of the 1450s (Einsiedeln, Stiftsbibliothek, cod. 206). A Breviary for the use of Tours dated to c.1450 has miniatures by the Budé Master offering similarities, like the kneeling Virgin at the Presentation in the Temple (f.28; BnF, Lat. 1032, f.288v), while the Pentecost miniature by the Bedford/Dunois Workshop probably provided the apostle practically on all fours in the equivalent scene here (f.55; BnF, Lat. 1032, f.106v).
Attribution is complicated by the continuing interaction between the style and compositional patterns of the Budé and Coëtivy Masters. The Cromer Flight into Egypt, f.30, shares a pattern with both the Roubaix Hours, f.79v, and the Coëtivy Hours itself, f.51. A related scene, attributed to the Coëtivy Master, appears in a Paris Hours of c.1460, where the Budé Master’s hand has also been detected (Utopia, armarium codicum bibliophilorum, Cod. 106, f.100v, H. Tenschert, Leuchtendes Mittelalter, n.F. IV, 2007, no 20). In the Cromer Hours, the style of the Budé Master seems dominant.
Cromer’s additions were also commissioned in Paris, from Etienne Colaud (doc.1512-1541), who ran a large workshop to meet the demands of his numerous patrons, from Francis I downwards (see M.-B. Cousseau, Étienne Colaud, 2016). Colaud’s own work is seen in a signed Book of Hours dated 1512 (private collection): his bright colours and clear outlines create a striking immediacy, while his classicising Italianate vocabulary marks the profound shift in French art since the Netherlandish orientation of the Budé Master.
Cromer too was anxious to maintain the overall appearance of the Aspremont Hours, commissioning bar borders in the style of the original and of the 15th-century imitative additions. He even had two 15th-century pages brought closer to their c.1300 models, with the openings of matins and prime rewritten on shell gold grounds, ff.1 and 20. The new, much larger, marginalia, however, are unabashedly contemporary with the date of 1526, f.26v, although some were inspired by their predecessors, like the putto fighting a snail f.16, which relates to the hybrid and snail in the Aspremont Hours, f.118v, and its 15th-century copy, Cromer Hours, f.46v. Certainly executed for Cromer, featuring his arms, his boars and himself offering his heart, f.22, to his wife, f.21v, they may have been his own work. Brian Tuke, married to Cromer’s granddaughter, recorded at the top of the pastedown ‘This booke was the handie worke of Walter Cromer […]’ . Family tradition is not always unreliable: they are the only colour washed drawings in the book and the technique was well within the potential scope of a doctor wanting to copy or originate medical illustrations.
Walter and Alice may have been betrothed for some time before his graduation and their marriage in 1528. Alice could have received the book in 1526: the gift of Walter’s heart seems more appropriate to courtship than to the settled state of marriage. The gift of a manuscript that embodied over two hundred years of history was one then treasured for another four centuries, despite the changing religious practices that also left their mark on this extraordinary and fascinating volume.
The subjects of the original miniatures are: Annunciation f.1, Nativity f.20, Adoration of the Magi f.26, Presentation in the Temple f.28, Flight into Egypt f.30, Coronation of the Virgin f.32, Annunciation to the Shepherds (misbound) f.39v, David in penitence f.41, Crucifixion f.53, Pentecost f.55, shrouding a corpse f.57.
The subjects of the added miniatures are: Walter Cromer with St George killing the dragon, verso of leaf before calendar, Walter before St Andrew, leaf before f.1, hunter spearing boar (painted over text) f.20; boar hunt (painted over text) f.20v, Walter and Alice Cromer before the Virgin and Child f.35v, Alice accepting the heart offered by Walter (painted over text) f.39, Walter’s arms against a landscape (painted over text) f.30v, Walter before St Catherine f.31, Alice before St Helena f.52v.
Literature
E.G. Millar, ‘Livre d’heures executé pour Joffroy d’Aspremont et pour sa femme Isabelle de Kievraing’, Bulletin de la Société française de reproductions de manuscrits à peintures, 9, 1925, pp. 20–32, pp.26, 31-32.
R.R. James, ‘Walter Cromer, Physician to Henry VIII’, The Practitioner, CXXXIII, 1934, pp.200-207
M. Manion, The Felton Illuminated Manuscripts in the National Gallery of Victoria, 2005, pp. 98–203, p.131.
A. Stones, A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in France A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in France, Gothic Manuscripts: 1260-1320. Part Two, I, 2015, p.72.
| Place of origin: | England, Northern Europe, Western Europe, France, Europe, United Kingdom |
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| Auction house category: | Medieval & renaissance manuscripts, Books and manuscripts |
| Place of origin: | England, Northern Europe, Western Europe, France, Europe, United Kingdom |
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| Auction house category: | Medieval & renaissance manuscripts, Books and manuscripts |
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