William Scrots

William (or Guillim) Scrots (or Scrotes or Stretes; active 1537–1553)[1] was a painter of the Tudor court and an exponent of the Mannerist style of painting in the Netherlands.

Scrots was paid 50 marks in 1551 for three "great tables", two of which were portraits of Edward delivered to the ambassadors Thomas Hoby and John Mason as gifts for foreign monarchs, and the third a "picture of the late earle of Surrey attainted.

[11] In the words of art historian Ellis Waterhouse, "although Scrots was not a painter of high creative or imaginative gifts, he knew all the latest fashions, and a series of paintings appeared at the English court during the next few years which could vie in modernity with those produced anywhere in northern Europe".

[3] Scrots's portrait of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, takes a strikingly different approach to portraiture from that previously adopted by Holbein and other painters in England.

[15] A three-quarter length painting of Edward as Prince of Wales with Hunsdon House, Hertfordshire,[16] in the background and the famous portrait of Elizabeth I as princess (illustration), both dated to 1546, have been long suggested as undocumented works by Scrots,[9] but art historians have recently questioned that attribution.