TUDOR AND S TUART PORTRAITS
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English School circa 1600 – 1610
The Ditchley Henry VIII (1491 – 1547) Oil on canvas: 90 ¾ x 58 ½ in. (230.5 x 148.5 cm.) Painted circa 1600 – 1610 Provenance Sir Henry Lee, K.G. (1533 – 1611) of Ditchley, Oxfordshire; thence by descent at Ditchley Park to the Rt. Hon. Harold Arthur Lee-Dillon, 17th Viscount Dillon (1844 – 1932); his estate sale, Sotheby’s London, 24 May 1933, lot 53, 300 gns., bt. Leggatt by whom sold to the Rt. Hon. Ronald Nall-Cain, 2nd Baron Brocket (1904 –1967), Bramshill, Hampshire; The Brocket sale of Historical Portraits, Sotheby’s London, 16 July 1952, lot 45, 228 gns., bt. Barratt; Private collection, France. Literature G. Vertue, ‘Notebook I’, The Walpole Society, vol. XVIII, 1929/30, p.155. ‘A New Pocket Companion for Oxford…’, Oxford, 1809, printed for J. Cooke, under Ditchley, p.137, ‘Henry VIII. By Hans Holbein, in his highest finishing’. Catalogue of Paintings in the possession of the Right Honble. Viscount Dillon at Ditchley, Oxford, 1908, p.17, no.20. Tancred Borenius, ‘Ditchley Pictures’, Country Life, vol.LXXIII, 1933, p.190. R. Strong, Tudor and Jacobean Portraits, 1969, vol. I, pp.158-159. R. Strong, The Tudor and Stuart Monarchy, 1995, pp.34-35.
1. Of the other seven full-length versions, the four earliest are on panel and those that are later in date, on canvas. In order of likely age they are: (i) 1537 – c.1562, panel, The Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool; (ii) 1537 – c.1557, panel, Earl of Egremont, Petworth House (National Trust), Sussex; (iii) 1557 – 1574, panel, Duke of Devonshire, Chatsworth, Derbyshire; (iv) c.1560s, panel, Trinity College, Cambridge; (v) 1560 – 1600, canvas, Parham House, West Sussex, canvas; (vi) 1600 – 1620, Duke of Rutland, Belvoir Castle, canvas; (vii) 1620 – 1630, canvas, Royal Collection, St. James’s Palace, London. For a full discussion, see X. Brooke & D. Crombie, Henry VIII Revealed, Holbein’s Portrait and its Legacy, 2003, ex. cat., Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. 2. R. Strong, The Cult of Elizabeth, 1977, p.154, where it is described as ‘Lee’s own picture of his life’s heroine’. It was bequeathed to the National Portrait Gallery by his descendant the 17th Viscount Dillon in 1932. 3. E.K. Chambers, Sir Henry Lee: An Elizabethan Portrait, 1936, p.149.
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s the most potent and iconic image ever created of a monarch, Holbein’s monumental portrayal of Henry VIII has come down to us over the centuries through innumerable copies and versions, and even derivations to pub signs. This newly rediscovered work now joins a small surviving group of seven other full-lengths.1 All the other replica portraits after Holbein of the King are smaller in scale, being either three-quarter, half- or bust-length; the great majority of which were predominantly painted in the second half of the sixteenth or beginning of the seventeenth century. Since none of the other known full-length versions are ever likely to be sold, our portrait has extra significance, particularly given its important and prestigious provenance. It was very likely commissioned by Sir Henry Lee, K.G. (1533 – 1611), one of Queen Elizabeth’s most beloved and faithful courtiers, to decorate his newly built long gallery at Ditchley, his home in Oxfordshire. There it would have been a companion to another full-length portrait, Lee’s celebrated masterpiece by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, the so-called ‘Ditchley Elizabeth I’, which portrays the elderly Queen standing upon a map of England (fig.2).2 Lee by now was quite elderly and in retirement, having faithfully served Queen Elizabeth for over forty years as one of her greatest favourites. In 1570 Elizabeth had appointed him her Champion, and thus he was responsible for the supervision of the famous accession-day tilts, turning them into large and spectacular public festivals. These armed combats were padded out with eulogistic speech-making and triumphant music for which Lee directed and wrote most of the material. In 1580 he was then also appointed Master of the Armoury. Even after his retirement in 1590 aged fifty-seven, with the royal choir singing ‘my golden locks, time hath to silver turned’ set to music by Dowland, Elizabeth I still required him to continue overseeing the annual festival in her honour. During her visit to Ditchley in 1592, Lee told Elizabeth that though no longer her Champion, he nonetheless continued to have ‘a verie courte in his own bosome, making presence of her in his soule, who was absent from his sight’.3 Lee had first entered the service of the Tudors under Henry VIII at the young age of fourteen, so for him to commission and display majestic portraits of first his Queen and then his former King, would have been a significant statement both of his loyalty to the Tudor crown, as well as a glorious reflection of his own importance within their courts. fig.3 Anthonis Mor (Antonio Moro), Sir Henry Lee, oil on panel, 1568, © The National Portrait Gallery, London.
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