I visited
this exhibition on a Saturday afternoon after the monthly talk at the National
Gallery on a painting by Ingres. Having
done the father at the NPG talk on 25th October, I thought it was
time to find out more about the son, elder brother to Charles I and also
brother of Elizabeth Stuart- Winter Queen of Bohemia ( http://profwhitestick.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/elizabeth-stuart-winter-queen-of.html).
I had heard
one enthusiastic review on Radio 4 and a friend who had gone had said it was
OK, some nice pictures but… I decided to go nonetheless and asked a friend to
go round with me. With a concession, the
ticket cost £10 for the pair of us.
The NPG has
“gathered” a lot of material on the subject and short life of Henry Stuart,
heir to the Scottish and English thrones and son of King James VI/I. Some objects have been loaned by the Royal
Collection, British Library and British Museum.
The exhibition has many large paintings by Robert Peake the Elder, of
Prince Henry as he grew up and there is a well crafted portrait by Isaac Oliver,
which was copied by others.
The prince
was born in Stirling and brought up there until after his father James VI
ascended the English throne. In moving
to London the King had been careful to ensure that the son was trained in
kingship and learned about arts and science, as it was deemed expedient for
both a renaissance and warrior prince within his European peer group. King James was no renaissance man, unlike
King James IV of Scotland and even his grandfather King James V. James VI/I is nevertheless credited with
keeping the peace between Spain and England while ensuring that war was avoided
at all costs.
The Scottish
Reformation had wiped out much of nascent art in a process which made the
Bonfire of the Vanities seem like a Teddy Bears’ Picnic. The exhibition has detailed examples of
Prince Henry’s education and training to be a king and also fostering links
with other states in Europe. Through his
sister there were close links with the Elector Palatine and the House of Orange
with the warrior prince Maurits van Nassau (Maurice of Nassau) in the Northern
Netherlands. His mother was Anne of
Denmark, the sister to King Christian. For
a teenager, he seems to have been precocious and his achievements, such as they
were, have been imbued with those who die young- he died short of his 19th
birthday in 1612.
Some of the
exhibition panels have been quite well crafted and some of the documents and
covers are “blown” up on the walls. His
wooden effigy is on display (minus the head) with a setting illustrating the
Westminster Abbey life-size configuration on the wall above. That said, many of the walls are otherwise
bare. In this regard, this exhibition
compares unfavourably with the use of exhibition wall space as at, for example,
the Catherine the Great Exhibition in Edinburgh, which included many
representational devices as decorative panels.
While this show has more large scale enlargements than the British
Library Illumination exhibition, there is no audio and the only video screen which
I encountered appeared not to be working.
In making these
comparisons with two other exhibitions, I should add that I had the catalogues
before I visited these two; I bought the Prince Henry catalogue in the shop
after my visit and have had part of the essays read out. There has been some debunking of a rather
“over the top” book by Roy Strong and an essay by Malcolm Smuts suggests a more
academic approach to the exhibition rather than seeing it as a
showstopper. (Catalogue details are as
follows: The Lost Prince – the Life and Death of Henry Stuart by Catherine
MacLeod, National Portrait Gallery, London, 2012 ISBN 978-1-85514-458-3)
The
background music is a bit monotonous and given Henry’s support for the Arts and
Masques, some more interesting music from the masques or composers at the time
could have been played. The displays of
his armour and the sketches of the barriers and masques arranged by Inigo Jones
are discernible on viewing.
The pictures by Peake may not reach critical
acclaim but they are simple enough to make out with some limited vision. I lost a bit of the horse when Henry is shown
with Robert Devereux in a stag hunt.
Otherwise the Peake portraits are brightly coloured and of the right
size to be enjoyable. Manuscripts are a
possible problem area and you need someone to read out the content and labels. My friend was just about able to read some of the correspondence from the originals, though there are printed panels of some of the texts. There seemed to be nothing to handle though if you are interested in his suits of armour (he was 14 at the time), the Wallace Museum has a handling area.
The merchandise is, however, worth a browse.
There are quill ballpoint pens for £1.50 and some of the knick knacks
are worth handling, perhaps even buying for Christmas: velvet scarves,
jewellery, pewter tankards and candlesticks, books and cards.
If you are
interested in Jacobean life, then this is a very good exhibition and adds much
to what’s currently on offer on the topic in London such as the Shakespeare
Exhibition at the British Museum and Timon of Athens at the National
Theatre. There is a beautiful bronze of
a horse said to be coveted (Good King James Bible word) by his brother Charles. The Letters Patent of his creation as Prince
of Wales and Earl of Chester are on show and this is a timely reminder that not
all Princes of Wales ever keep, let alone ascend, the throne. There is much to
enjoy and doubtless this will launch many historical novels of the “What if
Henry had become King?” type
The labels
appear to be numberless and my friend wrote down some items of interest and has
later matched them with the catalogue.
The catalogue numbers are not followed in the exhibition. My viewing notes of the exhibition as it
presented itself have had the catalogue number of the book (£25) added. The order of the exhibition is not clear
though the themes of the exhibition show the time line from birth to death,
funeral and Henry being quickly forgotten.
The notes are as follows:
Cat 1. Prince Henry Frederick
Unidentified
artist, 1596
Cat 11
Basilikon Doron
James VI of
Scotland (later James I of England) , c1598Ink on paper, bound in velvet with gold clasps
Cat 7 Prince
Henry
Marcus
Gheeraerts the Youngerc1603, oil on canvas
Portrait, age 9
Cat. 3 James
VI of Scotland and I of England
John de
Critz, the Elderc1606
Cat 8
Princess Elizabeth, later Queen of Bohemia
Robert Peake,
the Elderc1603
Cat 9 Charles
I, when Duke of York and Albany, 1600-1649
Robert Peake,
the Elder c1610
Cat 15 David
Murray of Gorthy
Unidentified
artist, 1603Cat 14 Prince Henry with Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex
Robert Peake, the Elder, c1605
Cat 27
Letters Patent of James I creating his son Henry Prince of Wales and Earl of
Chester
Attributed to
Isaac Oliver and two other unidentified hands, 1610Cat 28 Prince Henry on Horseback
Robert Peake, the Elder
c1606-08?
(on loan from Parham House, Pulbourough, West Sussex)
Set and
costume designs for Prince Henry’s Barriers
Inigo Jones,
1610
Cat 29 Prince
Henry’s Armour for the Field, Tilt, Tourney and Barriers
Royal
Armoury, Greenwich, under Jacob Halderc1608
Suit of Armour at age 14
Cat 30 Prince
Henry’s Armour
Dutch, c1608Suit of Armour showing thistles, rose and fleur di lis
Cat 33 Henry,
Prince of Wales
Isaac Oliver,
c1610-12
portrait used in exhibition’s flyer
Cat 47
Thomas, 2nd Baron Vaux of Harrowden
Hans Holbein
the Youngerc1533
Cat 48
Elizabeth Cheney, Lady Vaux
Hans Holbein
the Youngerc1536
Cat 45 Henry,
Prince of Wales
Robert Peake,
the Elderc1610
Portrait showing Henry not in martial pose
Can see hilt and rapier, left arm on hip
Cat 49 Boy
Looking Through a Casement Window
Unknown
Netherlandish artist, c1550-60
Cat 50 A
Bearded Old Man with a Shell
Michiel Jansz
van Miereveltoil on panel, c1606
Cat 58
Astronomiae Instaurate Mechanica
Tycho Brahe1602
Cat 53 Pacing
Horse, bronze
Pietro Tacca,
after Giambologna (Jean Boulogne), c1600Cat 52 Cesarine Venus
17th Centry cast after a model by after Giambologna (Jean Boulogne)
Cat 65 John
Smith’s map of Virginia
William Hole,
1612
Cat 60 Prince
Henry
Robert Peake,
the Elder c1605-8
foot on shield. This is the most interesting picture and shows a character emerging with a sense of movement.
Wall panel of
elegies
Very vividHP
Ich di fn
(ich dien on coat of arms)
Cat 80 Charles
I, Duke of York
Robert Peake,
the Elder c1613
Cat 74 The
Effigy of Henry, Prince of Wales
Richard
Norris, 1612
Cat 82 Henry,
Prince of Wales
Daniel Mytens
after Isaac Oliver, 1628
Postscript
On reviewing
the catalogue at home, I managed a cross-check with William Drummond of
Hawthornden who wrote an elegy in 1613.
It was included in the show but I hadn’t noted it specifically. Drummond wrote an elegy for Prince Henry
titled “Tears of Meliades” (Teares on the Death of Moeliades). This was one of the items in a case below the
large expansion I noted. However, I
hadn’t noted Drummond’s work specifically, which according to the catalogue,
was a 3rd edition, printed by Andro Hart in Edinburgh in 1614.
The catalogue
and the exhibition have proved useful in linking both portrait galleries in
London and Edinburgh. I was searching in
the Scottish Portrait Gallery picture labels which Meg Faragher kindly sent me
after my visit and there is a portrait of Drummond in Edinburgh. The details are:
William
Drummond of Hawthornden (1585
– 1649)
attributed to
Abraham van Blijenberchoil on panel, painted in 1612
This
sensitive portrayal of the poet and historian William Drummond of Hawthornden
is attributed to the little-known Netherlandish artist Abraham van Blijenberch.
It is possibly one of only a few portraits he painted during a four-year stay
in London. Van Blijenberch painted other
Scots, such as Charles I and Robert Kerr, 1st Earl of Ancram. This portrait shows the young and pensive
Drummond in a fashionable black doublet and lace-edged standing collar. It was painted in 1612, around the time
Drummond wrote his famous elegy Tears on the Death of Meliades, which
commemorated the death of King James’s elder son and heir, Henry, Prince of
Wales.
PG 1096
bought in 1928
