BETTES, John, II

English painter, son of John Bettes I. He was in a team employed during the Christmas season of 1578-79 by the Office of the Revels, which was responsible for stage scenery and properties and other decorative work. An attractive Portrait of a Girl (private collection), inscribed ‘I. B.’ and dated 1587, is attributed to him, and there are tentative attributions of several portraits of Elizabeth I and other ladies. The decorative treatment of costume is reminiscent of Nicholas Hilliard, under whom, according to Vertue, the artist studied.

The younger Bettes lived for a time in Grub Street in the parish of St Giles Cripplegate, London, and in the register and a subsidy roll of the late 1590s he is entered as ‘picturemaker’, the word then generally used for a large-scale painter. In his will, where he is described as a citizen of London and freeman of the Painter-Stainers’ Company, he bequeathed to his son John a ‘pictar of his Grandfather’, a porphyry stone and muller for grinding colours and two easels. Edward Bettes, painter-stainer, presumably the last surviving grandchild of John the Elder, died at Deptford in 1661, having bequeathed ‘all my bookes concerning my calling and all my draughts’ to a friend and neighbour.