Lady Jane Grey in the Tower, by W. F. Yeames. 1867. Oil on canvas. 10 5/8 x 16 3/16 inches (27 x 41.1 cm). Collection of Museums Sheffield. Accession no. VIS.1386. Image via Art UK on the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (CC BY-NC-ND). [Click on both the images to enlarge them.]
This is another of Yeames's historical works dealing with his favourite Tudor period. A small painting, executed in 1867, is in the collection of the Weston Park Museum in Sheffield. This has the appearance of a sketch and differs significantly from another more finished version that dates to 1868. Lee Porritt has identified the later work as the version shown at the Royal Academy in 1868 but this has proved controversial. It is certainly a more finished version and is therefore the logical painting to have been exhibited. A reviewer for The Spectator, however, has identified Feckenham as wearing a black robe and not a red one in the exhibited picture, suggesting that it could have been the smaller version that was shown. Perhaps favourable reviews from when the smaller picture was shown at the Royal Academy led him to complete a more elaborate version later that same year. Another possibility is that Yeames may have heeded the criticism about the black robe and repainted the chaplain's garment to a more Catholic red to make the exhibited painting potentially more saleable.
Lady Jane Grey in the Tower, by W. F. Yeames. 1868. Oil on canvas. 35 x 61 inches (89 X 155 cm). Private collection. Image courtesy of Lee Porritt.
Lady Jane Grey was a popular subject for artists with twenty-six paintings depicting scenes from her life exhibited at the Royal Academy between 1794-1877. Of these, a total of nine dealt with scenes of her imprisonment in the Tower of London that had occurred between July 19, 1553 and February 12, 1554. It is possible to date the exact date depicted in Yeames's painting because John Feckenham, Queen Mary's personal chaplain, visited Lady Jane on 8 February 1554. By this time she had already been convicted as a traitor for accepting the English crown and had been sentenced to death. Queen Mary was prevented from granting Lady Jane with a pardon because the Spanish had demanded that Jane die as a condition of the marriage between Mary and Philip of Spain. Mary did attempt, however, to save Jane's immortal soul by sending Feckenham to visit Jane to try and convert her to the true religion of Catholicism prior to her death.
Like many Victorian history painters Yeames tried to make his composition as accurate as possible. The facial features of Lady Jane are heavily reliant on the Wrest Park portrait, which in the 19th century was thought to be a contemporary image of her. In the oil sketch Jane is portrayed in a dimly lit furnished cell in the Tower with the light streaming in from one small barred window in the upper centre of the composition. She has been allowed access to her books and writing paper. A fireplace is in her room to provide warmth. In the final version the room is much better lit and a door to her cell with a window replaces where the fireplace was. The furnishings are rather richer in the final version and an unbalanced scale, likely intended to represent the unfair justice of her death sentence, is shown to the left of Lady Jane. While the poses of the two figures have remained much the same their garments are far different between the two versions. Jane's simple dress and cap in the sketch has been replaced by a much more elaborate costume more befitting of a Queen. In the sketch Feckenham is shown in the plain black robes of a priest while in the later version he is wearing his red ecclesiastical robes in his role as Dean of Westminster. Feckenham is shown as a rather elderly man in Yeames's picture, and was commonly portrayed as such by other Victorian artists. He likely would have only been in his early forties, however, at the time of Lady Jane's imprisonment.
When Lady Jane Grey in the Tower was exhibited at the Royal Academy it was well received. A critic for The Art Journal found the painting a searching analysis of character:
W. F. Yeames, A.R.A., also takes as the subject of a successful picture an incident from the touching story of Lady Jane Gray. The simple-minded, truth-seeking lady is here seen seated in prison; opposite, the Dean of Westminster, the emissary of Queen Mary, has planted himself, with the purpose of assailing her faith. With what avail, the whole bearing of Lady Jane in the Tower (363) sufficiently declareth. Frail in physical frame, the noble prisoner remains in the presence of death steadfast in faith. Much thought, but no irresolution, may be read in that calm countenance; the clasp of the hands bespeaks fixity of purpose. The dean, a fierce narrow fanatic, flings, as it were, arguments at the head of his gentle antagonist, who simply remains unmoved, firm in her Protestant creed, serene in an unclouded conscience. The picture, in fact, is a searching analysis of character. The artist, as usual, in the use of colour shows nice distinctions; he is fond of such quiet concords as may be educed from monotones; the varied harmonies brought out of unobtrusive greys should not pass without observation. Mr. Yeames, indeed, has seldom permitted himself to break out into violent positives; he prefers secondary and tertiary hues, which indeed, it must be confessed, are most consonant with serious thought, and certainly best in keeping with imprisonment and impending death. The handling is, as usual, free from show or assumption; each touch has point, and bears out the intention ... Mr. Yeames is a steady, conscientious, but hardly brilliant painter" (102).
F.G. Stephens in The Athenaeum once again praised Yeames's ability to capture the correct expression on Lady Jane's countenance:
Of a graver and more thorough kind in art than these is Mr. Yeames's Lady Jane Grey in the Tower (363) – a picture of the luckless lady in the act of listening to the arguments of Feckenham, Queen Mary's confessor. The former sits with all the evidence in her face and attitude of a struggle with power, but not against reason or faith. She grasps the Bible with one hand, and grasps that hand with its fellow, as if to make doubly sure, and in two ways to express her reliance. Her face is marked by pain, as if the mind within was pressed by physical fear, and yet held on bravely. This is a first-rate piece of expression, which is very hard to describe, and yet easy to appreciate. The confessor's unctuousness, his unreal earnestness of action, and horny eyes are specimens of able design. [701]
The reviewer for The Illustrated London News praised the artist for his propriety of conception:
Mr. Yeames's principal picture (363), representing Lady Jane Grey in the Tower, discomfiting Feckenham, Mary's chaplain, in the learned disputation he had invited with a view of inducing the young prisoner to change her faith, is distinguished by the artist's propriety of conception. The priest has an aspect at once bigoted and supple, sinister and insidious, as he adduces authority for his arguments from the illuminated tomes with which he is armed, and the condemned maiden adds to her beauty and intelligence the sweet patience of a martyr. The painting, likewise, is admirably solid, sound, and free from all trick; but the colouring has a slight tendency to hotness not observable in previous works, and the interest of the subject is too anecdotic a character to be susceptible of complete pictorial realization. [495]
The Spectator felt this was the best picture dealing with the life of Lady Jane Grey in the exhibition:
There is always pleasure in looking at such earnest and manly work as Mr. Yeames's. The life of Lady Jane Grey affords a subject for more than one exhibitor at the present Exhibition, but only Mr. Yeames has treated it worthily. His scene is in the Tower, when Feckenham, the Queen's Chaplain, engages the prisoner in a learned disputation intended to convert her from her Protestant tenants. The chaplain urges his arguments warmly - with the ardour of a partizan, rather than with the comforting warmth of a ghostly adviser. His "patient" is much-enduring, yet not undistressed, as the artist has well expressed it in her fair face; and the issue of the argument may be foreseen. The subject Mr. Yeames has got well hold of, and has embodied it in a composition the large arrangement of which is well adapted to give it serious and solemn meaning. The colour, too, is good, and the painting careful throughout, but by no means laboured. However, in the matter of colour, more might have been made of the chaplain's black gown in the hands of a Phillip [John Phillip] [647]
Philip Hamerton, wring in The Portfolio, considered this work Yeames's masterpiece of his early period:
In 1868 was exhibited the picture which I should rank as the painter's masterpiece thus far, Lady Jane Gray in the Tower wearily but gently listening to the exhortations of Feckenham, Abbott of Westminster. Of all the Lady Jane Greys in English painting – including two of C. R. Leslie's – I know of none at once so touching and so true to historical character as this of Mr. Yeames. And the picture showed in an eminent degree his special technical merits of solid, well-balanced, and complete workmanship. It says little for the soundness of appreciation among our patrons, that this fine and deeply interesting picture remained for a long time on the painter's hands. Nothing can more strikingly show the temptation which is ever drawing away the English painter from the field of grave history to that of telling dramatic incident, or pretty, pleasing sentiment, or rather sentimentality. He has to tax his ingenuity to find subjects which combine the historical, at which he aims, with the incidental, which attracts the public and purchasers. [83]
Link to Related Material
- Jane Grey and Lord Gilbert Dudley brought back to the Tower through Traitors' Gate, by George Cruikshank
- [Lady Jane Grey Watching the Body of Her Husband Being Carried Past the Window after Execution], by Marcus Stone
- The Execution of Lady Jane Grey at Tower Green, by George Cruikshank
Bibliography
"Art. The Royal Academy." The Spectator XLI (30 May 1868): 647-48.
"Exhibition of the Royal Academy." The Illustrated London News LII (16 May 1868): 495.
Hamerton. Philip. "English Painters of the Present Day. XXV. – W. F. Yeames, A.R.A." The Portfolio II (1871): 81-84.
Lady Jane Grey in the Tower. Art UK. Web. 1 September 2023.
Porritt, Lee. "William Frederick Yeames' Lost Masterpiece Lady Jane Grey in The Tower."
"Royal Academy." The Art Journal New Series VII (1 June 1868): 101-10.
Stephens, Frederic George. "Fine Arts. Royal Academy." The Athenaeum No. 2116 (16 May 1868): 701-02.
Created 1 September 2023