“Heaven take thy soul, and England keep my bones!”
Charles Dickens by Daniel MacliseAnne Bronte, Emily Bronte, and Charlotte Bronte by Patrick Branwell Bronte. The most tragic family in English history.ST and I dropped in on the National Portrait Gallery in Trafalgar Square to see some of the artwork. Some of these paintings and sculptures are so famous I’ve had them in textbooks over the years. See if you recognize any of them.
Title quote: William Shakespeare, King John
Elizabeth I by an unknown English artistKing Edward VI by the workshop associated with Master John. This is Henry VIII’s only legitimate son. Edward died when he was 16.Henry VIII by an unknown artist after Hans Holbein the YoungerHenry VIII and Anne Boleyn by an unknown artistThree electrotypes of effigies: Lady Margaret Beaufort (Henry VII’s mother), Edward, the Black Prince (of Wales), King Edward III, all by Elkington & Co.Sir Edwin Henry Landseer by John Ballantyne – Landseer is making one of the lions that now stands in Trafalgar SquareFor reference, here’s one of the four completed lions.T.S. Eliot by Patrick Heron. I love how England claims him as their own. He was born in St. Louis, y’all.Queen Victoria – painting by Sir George Hayter and sculpture by Sir Francis ChantreyThis rather bizarre sculpture by William Theed is of Prince Albert and Queen Victoria. They are wearing traditional Anglo-Saxon outfits to emphasize their German heritage. Bet they had to throw a blanket over this one about 20 years later.Robert Burns by Alexander NasmythLord Byron by Thomas PhillipsL-R: Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess of Cornwallis by Thomas Gainsborough and George Washington after Gilbert Stuart. The placement of these two paintings made me laugh out loud – Cornwallis is so much smaller than Washington. Wonder what we’d see here if we hadn’t won the Revolution.Queen Anne I by Michael Dahl. Anne was the last of the Stuart monarchs – none of her 18 children lived to succeed her.Flora McDonald by Richard Wilson. Flora famously smuggled Bonnie Prince Charlie away from the Culloden battlefield by dressing him in her clothes and thereby getting him to the Isle of Skye and out of the country. She spent 5 years in an English prison for this act of bravery but then became quite popular in London society.Charles Edward Stuart more commonly known as “Bonnie Prince Charlie” by Louis Gabriel Blanchet. I can only assume the hundreds of Highlanders who fought and died for him at Culloden Moor never actually saw him in person. Of course, that battle ended his hopes for reclaiming the throne of Scotland and England forever and was essentially the end of the Highland way of life.Sir Walter Raleigh by an unknown English artist. Supposedly his wife, Elizabeth Throckmorton Raleigh was so devastated by his death that she carried his severed head dipped in tar around in her purse for the rest of her life. Raleigh and Throckmorton defied Elizabeth I to marry in secret. She was one of the queen’s handmaidens and required the queen’s permission to marry.
Midwest Magellan 