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Charlotte Bolland's posts

Jane Seymour

New acquisitions in the sixteenth-century collection are relatively infrequent, so I was thrilled when the opportunity to purchase a portrait of Jane Seymour arose. …

By Charlotte Bolland, Senior Curator, Research and 16th Century Collections

23 August 2019

Woman Wearing a White Headdress, Hans Holbein the Younger, c. 1526-8, The Royal Collection

Curator’s Choice: Charlotte Bolland’s Top 3 Portrait Drawings

Co-curator Charlotte Bolland selects her favourite works from our current exhibition of Renaissance and Baroque drawings, The Encounter: Drawings from Leonardo to Rembrandt.…

By Charlotte Bolland, Senior Curator, Research and 16th Century Collections

27 July 2017

Les Tudors: Henry VIII finally reaches Paris

In 1523 Henry VIII’s troops, lead by Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, made a bold - but ultimately unsuccessful - move to take Paris and reclaim the French throne for the English king. Nearly five hundred years later, Henry VIII is finally making it to Paris. In partnership with the Réunion des Musées Nationaux, the Gallery is co-presenting an exhibition on the Tudor dynasty at the Musée du Luxembourg. This exciting collaboration extends the research undertaken for ‘The Real Tudors’ to consider Anglo-French relations and artistic exchange in the sixteenth century. The scale of the exhibition has also offered the opportunity to incorporate a number of important international loans and to look beyond portraiture to the broader material culture of the English renaissance.…

By Charlotte Bolland, Senior Curator, Research and 16th Century Collections

05 February 2015

Sir Thomas More, after Hans Holbein the Younger, early 17th century (1527), NPG 4358

In Conversation? More and Cromwell Face to Face

Hans Holbein’s portraits of two of the most prominent figures from Henry VIII’s court currently glower across a fireplace at each other in the Frick Collection in New York. Holbein painted Thomas Cromwell on the cusp of power, six years after he had painted the portrait of his first English patron, Thomas More. Each intended for a different patron, the unforeseeable twists of provenance have resulted in their current location in the same collection, almost half a millennium later. Both More and Cromwell were to die at the order of the king and to achieve international fame, and notoriety, for their roles in the English Reformation.…

By Charlotte Bolland, Senior Curator, Research and 16th Century Collections

08 May 2014

Elizabeth I and the Three Goddesses, attrib. Isaac Oliver, c. 1590. (c) National Portrait Gallery, London, Purchased with the support of Mark Weiss

The Mask of Elizabeth

It can be difficult to get a personal sense of Elizabeth I from her portraits. The Gallery owns eleven painted portraits of the queen, as well as numerous prints, and although these images offer the opportunity to chart her changing appearance throughout her reign, they were usually carefully constructed to present the image of a powerful sovereign, rather than a literal depiction of the woman who ruled England …

By Charlotte Bolland, Senior Curator, Research and 16th Century Collections

04 September 2013

Katherine of Aragon, by an Unknown artist, oil on panel, c. 1520, L246. By permission of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Church Commissioners.

Henry and Katherine Reunited

The recent conservation of a rare early portrait of Katherine of Aragon, which is on long-term loan from Lambeth Palace, has presented the Gallery with the opportunity to display portraits of Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon together as a pendant ‘pair’. The two works, from around the same date, are of a similar scale with a similar green damask background, and it is likely that they are both examples of portrait ‘types’ that would have been placed together in this way, nearly five hundred years ago.…

By Charlotte Bolland, Senior Curator, Research and 16th Century Collections

30 January 2013