Six Lives: The Stories of Henry VIII's Queens begins at the National Portrait Gallery - Medievalists.net (2024)

Six Lives: The Stories of Henry VIII’s Queens opens today at the National Portrait Gallery in London. This exhibition reunites items last seen together when owned by the queens themselves, including never-before-displayed artifacts and a 16th-century portrait once thought lost.

Exploring agency, influence, and cultural impact, the exhibition features contemporary portraits by Hiroshi Sugimoto and costumes from SIX the Musical, alongside 16th-century portraits by Hans Holbein the Younger, tapestries, textiles, books, and jewels.

Running from June 20 to September 8, 2024, the exhibition examines the representation of Katherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Katherine Howard, and Katherine Parr. It presents these queens in chronological order, focusing on their narratives rather than their infamous husband.

“Henry VIII was the star around which the country and Tudor court orbited,” says Charlotte Bolland, Senior Curator of Research and 16th Century Collections at the National Portrait Gallery. “In his nearly 38-year reign, the six women who married him were protagonists in an almost implausible melodrama. Often reduced to the rhyme ‘Divorced, Beheaded, Died / Divorced, Beheaded, Survived,’ this exhibition seeks to restore the queens’ individuality and agency in both historic and contemporary storytelling, bringing them out of Henry’s shadow and their homogenous grouping.

“By encountering the court culture in which they performed their roles as queens, the images of their families and peers, the works that they commissioned, the objects they owned and even the letters and notes that they wrote, we cannot fail to glimpse them as individuals. In this exhibition, the faint surviving traces of each queen are displayed alongside the portraits that have helped to turn them into icons.”

The exhibition includes historic paintings, miniatures, drawings, personal possessions like letters and books, contemporary photography, costumes, and film. It highlights the queens’ family networks, relationships with the king, patronage, interests, and their use of portraiture to communicate politics, religious beliefs, values, identity, and status.

Important loans from private collections include a recently conserved panel of Katherine Parr, attributed to ‘Master John,’ and an Edgar Degas portrait of Anne of Cleves. The three-quarter-length portrait of Katherine Parr, long believed lost in a 1949 fire, will be displayed publicly for the first time since its recent conservation and auction. The Degas portrait offers an unusual view of the 16th-century queen through the eyes of a French Impressionist painter.

Other notable items include Katherine of Aragon’s writing box, Anne Boleyn’s inscribed Book of Hours, an illustrated bible commissioned by Thomas Cromwell after Jane Seymour’s death, Anne of Cleves’ account book, a miniature portrait of Katherine Howard by Hans Holbein the Younger, and a prayer book by Katherine Parr with an inscription from Henry VIII, displayed in London for the first time.

The exhibition also examines how the queens’ stories have been constructed and revised throughout history, inspiring writers and artists to uncover the ‘truth’ of their lives. Portraits and performances often feature iconic elements, like Anne Boleyn’s pearl necklace with a ‘B’ pendant or Holbein’s detailed depiction of Anne of Cleves’ clothing.

Contemporary works by Hiroshi Sugimoto, shown in London for the first time, include black and white photographs of waxwork depictions of each queen by Madame Tussaud’s. These images explore the tension between reality and imagination.

The exhibition also features depictions from cinema, theatre, opera, and television, including Katherine of Aragon’s costume from SIX the Musical, film clips from the 1920 German film “Anna Boleyn,” costumes from Royal Shakespeare Company and Royal Opera House performances, and designs from the 1970 BBC production “The Six Wives of Henry VIII.”

Finally, it looks at the queens’ lives in their own time, comparing them to women of classical antiquity and the Bible, whose stories were ever-present in court life. Playing cards featuring biblical heroine Judith as The Queen of Hearts and Joos van Cleve’s painting “Lucretia” (c. 1520-25) remind us that these queens were always performing on the court stage.

Nicholas Cullinan, Director of the National Portrait Gallery, comments, “The National Portrait Gallery offers a particularly resonant space in which to consider the lives of Katherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Katherine Howard and Katherine Parr, situated as we are in the West End of London, amongst the theatres, opera houses and cinemas that have staged the queens’ stories for hundreds of years. Bringing the smoke and mirrors of the stage and screen into dialogue with the magnificence of the Tudor court, Six Lives: The Stories of Henry VIilI’s Queens hopes to engender empathy, reminding us to consider the stories that we collectively construct, and the ease with which we can come to define people by a single moment in their lives.”

Click here to learn more about Six Lives: The Stories of Henry VIII’s Queens

Top Image: Photo by © David Parry / National Portrait Gallery.