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‘Divorced, beheaded, died; divorced, beheaded, survived.’ This mnemonic has helped generations of schoolchildren to remember the fates of Henry VIII’s six wives, but also reflects a tendency to reduce Katherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Katherine Howard, and Katherine Parr to an unindividualised group known only for their marriage to the Tudor king.
Six Lives, the National Portrait Gallery’s first historical exhibition since it reopened in June 2023 following a major three-year redevelopment, sets out to redress the balance, bringing together images and artefacts to illuminate each queen’s personality and interests, as well as key events from her life. The displays begin with an exploration of how their depictions have varied across the centuries, a cultural and commercial afterlife ranging from Shakespeare and Donizetti to BBC dramas, 1920s German silent film, and the musical SIX.
Anne of Cleves by Hans Holbein the Younger.
From there, visitors learn about the context of the Tudor royal court, and the roles and social expectations of women within it, before encountering the queens themselves. They are no longer an indivisible sextet: each woman is given her own room, containing portraits as well as personal possessions and other items. Some of the objects reflect the queens’ intellectual interests: a writing box covered with Katherine of Aragon’s emblems; the books they owned (and, in the case of Katherine Parr, wrote); designs for items of jewellery, fountains, and cups. The authority that they could wield is reflected in letters written by Katherine of Aragon and Katherine Parr when serving as regent during the king’s campaigns abroad. We also gain vibrant insights into into the personality of Anne of Cleves – so often reduced to anecdotes about an overly-flattering portrait and an embarrassingly short marriage – from her account book, whose pages, proudly signed ‘Anne the Quene [sic]’, document payments to musicians, gambling debts, and gifts.
Other manuscripts, however, emphasise how fragile this position could be, and how dependent it was on providing a male heir. There is a letter drafted in anticipation of Anne Boleyn giving birth, announcing the delivery of a prince, which was hastily amended when the future Elizabeth I arrived. In the following room, a missive in the name of Jane Seymour celebrates the arrival of a son who would become Edward VI – for this success, she alone was commemorated by Henry VIII after her death.
By contrast, discarded queens suffered a kind of Tudor damnatio memoriae, with their names and emblems erased and replaced by those of their successors. The exhibition includes an ornate cup that Henry VIII gave to Katherine of Aragon; when their union ended, her symbols were removed from it. There is a Book of Hours, too, in which Anne Boleyn and Henry wrote loving messages to each other – Anne’s affectionate inscription can still be seen, but her signature has been subsequently snipped away. Most enigmatic of all is Katherine Howard, for whom no confirmed portrait survives. Documents on display mainly reflect her downfall rather than her life, but there is a flicker of happier times in the form of a book whose binding is stamped with her initials. Its crisp pages suggest that the volume was never read, perhaps suggesting how it escaped notice after its owner’s ignominious end.
Further information: Six Lives: the stories of Henry VIII’s queens runs at the National Portrait Gallery until 8 September. For more information, see http://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/exhibitions/2024/six-lives.
Images: Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Gabriella Slade, presented under licence from Ex-Wives Ltd/Victoria and Albert Museum
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