(b ?c.1540; bur. London, 30 Aug. 1596). English portrait painter. He was appointed serjeant-painter to Queen Elizabeth in 1581 and seems to have been the leading English portraitist of his day. His Sir Thomas Kytson and Lady Kytson (1573, Tate, London) show his clear and individual, if unsubtle, style. Gower was a gentleman by birth and his Self-Portrait (1579, priv. coll.) shows his coat of arms outweighed in a balance by a pair of dividers, a symbol of the painter's craft.