‘19th century’ portrait of Henry is Tudor original
A PORTRAIT of Henry VIII donated to a council a century ago and thought to be a modern copy has been identified as a Tudor original.
It was given to local authorities in Bath at the end of the 19th century by Captain Frederick Henry Huth, who put it on display at the city’s Victoria Art Gallery unaware of its true provenance.
However, during recent preservation work, experts dated it to 1537-1557. Henry reigned from 1509 to 1547.
The identity of the artist remains unknown but the panel was dated using dendrochronology, which determines the age of the wood by examining tree rings visible on the surface.
Like many contemporaneous portraits of Henry VIII, it was copied from the Whitehall mural, painted in 1537 by Hans Holbein the Younger for the king’s apartment at Whitehall Palace. The mural was lost when the palace burned down in 1698.
Henry was delighted with Holbein’s swaggering image and encouraged artists to make copies. One of the best is in the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool and authorities in Bath believe their painting is of similar quality.
Paul Myers, a local councillor, said: “This is one of the oldest and best pictures of Henry VIII in the world. We are very fortunate to have it in the council’s public art collection,” adding that the portrait would soon be back on display at the gallery for viewing free of charge.
The specialist dating work was funded by the Friends of Victoria Art Gallery Association whose chairman, Michael Rowe, said: “We look forward to further research into the chronology of this important picture.”
It is not the first Tudor painting to be reattributed in modern times. A portrait in Lambeth Palace, thought to have been of Catherine Parr, Henry VIII’S sixth wife, was identified in 2013 as Catherine of Aragon, his first wife, and painted in the 1520s rather than the 1540s.