You’ve got a big job on your hands if you want to retell one of the most overtold stories in English history. But the National Portrait Gallery still looked at the tale of Henry VIII and his six famous wives and thought: yeah, we can do this.
Sadly, they can’t. The famous divorced-beheaded-died-divorced-beheaded-survived narrative has been reframed and recounted so many times it has become as much folklore and popular culture as history. There have been plays, films, books, novels, songs and on and on. So the National Portrait Gallery takes two approaches here; firstly, they look at the way Katherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Katherine Howard and Katherine Parr have pervaded contemporary culture. There are Christmas tree decorations and mugs with their likenesses, costumes for plays, posters for films, designs for clothes worn in 1970s TV shows. The idea is that the six wives have taken on a cultural significance that supersedes their historical roles. But it’s undermined by how much of a mess it is, how the wives aren’t properly introduced, how little explanation or exposition there is. It ends up just feeling like a bunch of stuff, the historical figures treated more as symbols than individuals.
The six wives have taken on a cultural significance that supersedes their historical roles
The second approach the gallery takes is a more historical look at portraits of the queens and their families. Katherine of Aragon is poorly rendered and overpainted in a work by an unnamed artist, Anne Boleyn is strong and defiant, Jane Seymour is gentle and sickly, Anne of Cleves is aloof and distant, Katherine Howard is only present in a miniature by Holbein that might be of her, and Katherine Parr looks like she’s absolutely had enough. Throughout, there’s just a lack of information and context, the stories go only half told, and there’s not enough work here to back up the narratives.
If the intention was to do justice to the lives of these six women, it hasn’t worked. This is two not-very-good shows mashed together in a marriage of convenience that’s absolutely begging to be annulled.