Portraits of the founder at Eton and King's

WHAT DID the Founder look like? From the numerous painted, carved,

engraved and stained glass images to be found amongst the buildings and in the collections of Henry VI’s twin foundations of Eton and King’s, one might hope to be able to recog-nise the face of the royal Founder, and to get some sense of his character.

The disappointing truth is that no con-temporary likenesses survive. The images we have, therefore, are at best later copies of a lost original likeness done from life. And as over the centuries the copies become the pro-totypes for later images, the real features of the sitter become ever more obscured, and the ‘portraits’ reflect the artists’ ideas about the Founder and the expectations of the viewer rather than what he actually looked like.

One must also remember that we are deal-ing with the late medieval period, a period effectively before the dawn of portraiture in this country – generally assumed to date from the beginning of the 16th Century with portraits of the founder of the Tudor dynasty, Henry VII. Although very few surviving por-traits of English sitters date from before this time, later copies of lost 15th-century paint-ings indicate that portraits were produced in England before the Tudor period. And the

vast numbers of versions current in the 16th Century of the same portrait type of Henry VI reinforce the likelihood of there once be-ing an original ad vivum likeness.

Henry VI (1421-71), known as perhaps

PORTRAITS OF THE FOUNDER AT ETON AND KING’S

Henrietta Ryan

Fig 1: English School, late 16th or early 17th Century, Henricus Sextus Fundator. Eton CollegeFig 2. Opposite page: Anon, Late 15th Century, Henry the Sixth. Windsor Castle.

38 ETON COLLECTIONS REVIEW Number 2

as one of the less successful king of England who has ever reigned, was, for all his political failures, popular in his lifetime, and after his murder was venerated as a saint and martyr. He was the subject of a eulogy written by his confessor John Blacman, whose Memoir of the king was printed between 1514 and 1523. A helpful summary of Blacman’s description of Henry’s character is given in an oration delivered at Eton in 1972 by John Saltmarsh, Fellow and sometime Vice-Provost of King’s:

Blacman draws a picture of a studious, de-vout, retiring man, modest and unassuming, forthright and truthful; terse and simple of speech, abhorring oaths and profanity; simple too in his tastes, taking no pleasure in feasting or in gossip; dressing like a burgess or a peas-ant, clothed in sober black; setting no store by money; bountiful to the poor; generous and forgiving; and humane beyond the standards, and even the imagination of his age: detesting cruel punishments, detesting even cruelty to animals.1

Saltmarsh remarks that Henry VI had a ‘truly extraordinary notion’ of what being King of England was about – eschewing politics in order to ‘undertake great works of peace for the benefit of humanity’, namely the foun-dation of the two royal colleges of Eton and King’s which he speaks of as ‘the prymer no-table werk’ of his reign.2

Despite, however, the lack of a true like-ness of Henry VI, in the accumulation of im-ages of him commissioned by his two founda-tions during their histories certain aspects of his character can be discerned – his scholarly piety, unassuming modesty, simplicity of taste and manner and unworldliness.

Fig 3. Top: English School, 17th Century, Henry VI. Eton College

Fig 4. Bottom: English School, 17th Century. Henry the 6. Eton College

December 2007 ETON COLLECTIONS REVIEW 39

An examination of the various paintings, sculptures and panels of stained glass found in Eton and King’s show that images com-missioned by one or other institution have inspired copies or similar works in the sister foundation. The present article is an attempt to assemble as many of the works as possible at the two Colleges, notwithstanding the inevitable damage, loss and theft that have taken place over the years.

Eton has three portraits in oil on board (figs 1, 3, 4) of the same standard portrait type derived ultimately from what was very proba-bly an original ad vivum likeness of Henry VI, of which the version in the Royal Collection at Windsor is likely to be the closest, both in date and style (fig. 2). The king is shown half-length against a brocade background, facing slightly left with clasped hands, wear-ing a black cap, embroidered shirt, ermine trimmed tunic over a gown with fur at the cuffs, and with the collar of the Lancastrian order of SS from which hangs a jewelled cross or pendant. Oliver Millar notes of the Wind-sor version that it:

could have been painted late in the fifteenth century and in a workshop in which the Flemish element must have been strong… [It] provides the best extant example, and probably primary source, of types that were to be reproduced as the standard portraits in the sets of [royal] por-traits that became increasingly popular from the early 16th Century onwards’.3

Roy Strong proposes that the original like-ness was painted ‘during the fifties or possibly as late as the early sixties of the 15th Century’, a dating he suggests on the basis both of cos-

Fig 5. Top: English School, 17th Century, Henricus Sextus. Whereabouts unknown; stolen from King’s College in 1981

Fig 6. Bottom: English School, 18th Century (?), Henry VI (detail). King’s College


tume and portrait formula.4 This would mean that the king would have been in his 30’s or possibly 40’s when he was painted.5

The most important of the three Eton ver-sions is the ‘Founder’s’ portrait dating pos-sibly from the late 16th or early 17th Century (fig.1). It is set in a rectangular gilt frame sur-mounted by a crown, with the arms of France and England painted onto the background, and incorporating a panel below with the arms of Eton and King’s and the lettering ‘HENRICUS SEXTUS FUNDATOR’. The features of the king, and the details of his dress are close to that of the Windsor version. The second Eton version, also dating from the

17th Century, includes as part of the painted image the gold spandrels bearing the arms of France and England which are a feature of the frame of the Windsor prototype (fig. 3); the whole is set into an elaborate 17th-cen-tury frame carved with ivy leaves and berries. The painter of this version is less successful in rendering the features, with the set of the mouth hardened from the Windsor portrait where there is a faint hint of a smile around

Fig 8. Top: Anon, Brass statue of Henry VI on Hacomblen’s Great Lectern, 1515. King’s College Chapel

Fig 9. Right: Anon, 19th Century, Wooden statue of Henry VI after Hacomblen’s Lectern. Eton College

Fig 7. Opposite page: English School, 18th Century (?), Henry VI. Eton College

Fig 12: Francis Bird, Bronze statue of Henry VI in Garter robes, 1720. School Yard Eton College

Fig 12: Francis Bird, Bronze statue of Henry VI in Garter robes, 1720. School Yard Eton College Fig 13: John Bacon, Marble statue of Henry VI, 1786. Eton College Chapel


the lips. In the third Eton version the stand-ard half-length format has been expanded to three-quarter length and given a shaped top in order to match a companion portrait of Henry VII.

A version of this standard portrait type at King’s, possibly also 17th-century, lettered ‘HENRICUS SEXTUS,’ was stolen from College Hall in 1981, along with portraits of Henry VII and Richard III from their se-ries of royal portraits (fig. 5). A poor, pos-sibly 18th or 19th-century version remains in the College’s possession (fig. 6).6 It is notice-able that as these versions become further re-moved from the original prototype, and the copyists less good, the features of the king become harder and more linear.

A variant of the portrait type described above exists in an oil painting at Eton, where the king is shown three-quarter length, facing slightly right (fig. 7). The painting may have been adapted from the standard prototype to fit the need of a larger, more imposing format; the king is wearing the same clothes and jew-ellery, and is shown against a similar brocade background, although his features have been altered further in the process of copying.

The statue surmounting the Great Lec-tern in King’s College Chapel is the earliest of the sculpted images of the Founder (fig. 8). The brass lectern was erected in c.1515 by Robert Hacomblen, Provost of King’s from 1509-1528. As Hacomblen knew Henry VI well, the statue, although seemingly a gener-alised figure, has always been considered in some degree a portrait of the king.7 The small brass statuette (15 inches high), shows Henry

Fig 10. Top: Anon, 19th Century, Plaster statue of Henry VI after Hacomblen’s Lectern. Eton College

Fig 11. Right: Anon, Wooden statue of Henry VI on Manor House stairs, c. 1840, Eton College


crowned, wearing long robes, carrying the orb and sceptre, and with a dragon at his feet. His simple dress (his cloak reminiscent of an eccle-siastical cope) together with his gentle, pious features and slightly stooped bearing, convey an impression of a saintly otherworldliness.

The Eton collections contain two free-standing carved wooden versions of Ha-comblen’s statuette, one a slightly less compe-tent copy of the other (fig. 9); these appear to be 19th-century. A damaged plaster version, again probably 19th-century, also exists in the collections at Eton (fig. 10).

Another wooden statuette, probably in-spired by the Hacomblen statue, but not a copy of it, forms one of carved figures on the newel posts of the staircase of Eton’s Manor House, erected c. 1840 (fig. 11).

Possibly the best-known landmark of the Eton College site, apart from College Chapel, is the seven-foot high bronze statue situated in the centre of School Yard showing Henry VI in the robes of the Order of the Garter. It was given by Provost Godolphin in 1720, commissioned by him from Francis Bird (1667-1730/1) (fig.12). Bird studied under Pierre Legros in Rome, where he familiarised himself with the works of Bernini, and in England under Grinling Gibbons and Colley Ciber, and worked for Wren on the west front of St Paul’s Cathedral. The statue, considered as his masterpiece, has been described as ‘one of the major achievements of Baroque por-traiture this side of the Channel. It has none of the swagger and bravura of its continental counterparts. He stands there meekly, almost embarrassed by his orb and sceptre, with no hint of apotheosis or even canonization, a fo-

Fig 14. Top: Anon, 18th Century (?), Plaster statue of Henry VI after Bacon (lost). King’s College

Fig 15. Right: Anon, 19th Century, Plaster statue of Henry VI. King’s College


cus of domestic piety and affection’.8

Another larger than life-size (9ft) statue at Eton is the marble in College Chapel by John Bacon, commissioned in 1786 by the Revd Edward Betham, a fellow of Eton and King’s (fig. 13). Henry is shown crowned, wearing long robes, with his hands on a model of Eton College Chapel placed on a column at his side; he stands in the centre of the Ante-Chapel, so that his upturned face looks towards the al-tar through the arch of the organ screen. The statue has been described as a work of ‘Rococo saintliness whose gothic sentiment topples to-wards a Victorian sugariness’.9 A contemporary plaster copy of the statue, 44 cms high, with its

right arm broken, was last recorded in store in King’s College in 1987 (fig. 14).

Another statue of Henry VI showing him crowned, robed, and holding a staff and open book, is known in the full-length plaster stat-ue (81.4 cms high) of which versions exist at both Eton and King’s (fig. 15). The prototype for these 19th-century plaster casts has not been identified.

King’s has its own equivalent of Eton’s iconic statue in School Yard, in the bronze and stone statue of the Founder which sur-mounts H.A. Armstead’s 1879 fountain set in the centre of the college’s Front Lawn, against a backdrop of the Chapel and Gibbs build-ing (fig.16). A mid-court conduit had been part of Henry’s original plans for the site of his new foundation, many elements of which were never built during his life-time. Over four centuries later, his plan for the conduit was finally realised; above it a statue of the Founder, crowned, robed, and holding the Charter in his right hand, stands above two female statues of Religion and Learning.

The 16th-century Flemish stained glass windows in King’s Chapel include an impor-tant portrait of Henry (fig. 17) which is the source of images reproduced first in a life-size drawing made in the 18th Century and subse-quently in prints. It is likely that the Founder would have been commemorated similarly in the original windows of Eton College Chapel, although no record of a stained glass portrait survives. The King’s stained glass portrait is found in the Side-Chapel dedicated to Prov-ost Hacomblen, donor of the Great Lectern (see fig. 8). It shows Henry crowned, under a cinquefoil arch from which two winged putti suspend a garland, holding a staff in his right hand, and in his left a martyr’s crown on an open book. The eighteenth-century antiquary William Cole reports the tradition that this ‘curious half length Picture of the Holy Found-

Fig 16. Top: H.A. Armstead, Bronze and stone statue of Henry VI on fountain, 1879. Front Lawn, King’s College

Fig 17. Opposite page: Flemish, 16th Century, Stained glass panel showing Henry VI as martyr. King’s College Chapel


er of the College [was] reckoned the most like him of any remaining’.10

A life-sized copy of this panel was made in coloured chalks in 1775 by Thomas Orde, Lord Bolton, fellow of King’s;11 the drawing, which bears Orde’s manuscript dedication to the Provost and Fellows remains in the Col-lege’s collections (fig. 18). It was published in 1776 as a stipple engraving by Orde’s draw-ing-master, the Cambridge engraver and printseller, James Bretherton, and impres-sions of this print can be found hanging on the walls of both colleges (fig. 19). An aqua-tint, based on Orde’s drawing, was published in Ackermann’s History of the University of Cambridge, 1815, the plate described there as ‘from a Picture in the College’.

Amongst the group of 19th-century stained glass images at King’s, is one in the tracery of one of the Side-Chapels (once dedicated to Archbishop Rotherham), a portrait which encapsulates Henry’s vulnerability, show-ing him fragile and youthful-looking, hold-ing a sceptre and in his left hand an orb, the

Fig 18. Left: Thomas Orde, Chalk copy of Flemish 16th-century glass panel of Henry VI, 1775. King’s College

Fig 19. Bottom: James Bretherton, Stipple engraving after Thomas Orde’s drawing of Henry VI, 1776. Eton College

Fig 20. Opposite page: W. J. Bolton, Glass portrait, Henricus 6 Fundator, 1850. King’s College Chapel


weight and size of which he is barely able to support (fig. 20). This panel, designed by the glass painter W. J. Bolton in c. 1849, appears to have been modelled on a 15th-century glass panel in All Souls College, Oxford. Impres-sions of a print after a drawing of the All Souls’ glass portrait made by J.K Sherwin in c. 1800, can be found in the Eton and King’s collections (fig. 21).12 A related 19th-century image of a youthful Henry, similar to Bol-ton’s, but with the orb replaced by a book, is in the north oriel window of College Hall at King’s.13 Lastly in the 19th-century glass de-signed by Clayton and Bell in King’s College Chapel’s West Window, the Founder appears, holding a model of his chapel, amongst the company of the Blessed and the Angels.

In conclusion, amongst the many images of the Founder to be found in the collections of his collegiate foundations, two in King’s Chapel may be singled out as original pro-totypes for later images, commissioned by someone who knew him well: the statuette on the Great Lectern commissioned by Prov-ost Hacomblen and the stained glass portrait in Hacomblen’s Side-Chapel. A third proto-type, the oil portrait in the Royal Collection, an early copy of what we believe to have been a lost ad vivum image, generated a number of versions, of which the closest copy is the Founder’s portrait at Eton. Between them these images convey various aspects of Hen-ry’s character, traits well described in John Saltmarsh’s oration:

at the dawn of his manhood, an enthu-siast, an idealist, starry-eyed with all the instincts of a devout, humane, civilised philanthropist; born into an age, cast by Fate into a situation, quite unsuited to philanthropy, magnificently unprepared for the bitter task before him.14


Fig. 21. F. Bartolozzi after J.K. Sherwin, Etching, Henry VI ffundator, after drawing ‘made from an ancient window in All Souls College’, Oxford, c. 1800. Eton College

PHOTO CREDITS

Fig. 2: The Royal Collection © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth IIFigs 1, 3, 4, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 19, 21: By kind permission of

the Provost and Fellows of Eton CollegeFigs 5, 6, 8, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20: Copyright 2007 The Prov-

ost and Scholars of King’s College, Cambridge

ENDNOTES

1 J. Saltmarsh, King Henry VI and the Royal Foundations. A commemorative Oration delivered at Eton College, Cam-bridge 1972, pp.2-3.

2 Ibid. p. 4.3 O.Millar, Tudor, Stuart and Early Georgian Pictures in the

Collection of Her Majesty The Queen, London 1963, I, pp. 9 and 50 (cat. 6).

4 R.Strong, Tudor and Jacobean Portraits, National Portrait Gallery, London 1969, p. 147. He relates the portrait formula to that evolved during the 1450’s by Rogier van der Weyden, where sitters are shown half-length, with their heads evenly lit, their faces turned in three-quarter view, and their arms on the edge of the picture frame with their hands often clasped.

5 A similar type but showing the king with markedly differ-ent features (small mouth, prominent chin and curled hair) exists in a 1520’s version in the Society of Antiquaries and in a 1540’s version in the National Portrait Gallery.

6 In the Catalogue of the Plate and Portraits & Other Pic-tures at King’s College Cambridge, Cambridge 1933, two portraits of Henry VI are listed, one of which was then hanging in the Parlour and the other in Hall; the latter is described as very similar to the former ‘but he wears no collar and pendant’. This description remains a mystery as both the stolen and remaining versions show the collar and pendant.

7 Hacomblen was King’s scholar at Eton, 1469-71, and a member of King’s for more than five decades, holding many senior college positions.

8 O.Van Oss in ed. J. McConnell, Treasures of Eton, Lon-don 1976, p. 25.

9 Ibid. p. 27.10 British Library, MS, Add, 5814, f. 83r, William Cole,

‘Collections’: as quoted in H.G. Wayment, King’s College Chapel, Cambridge: the Side-Chapel Glass, Cambridge 1988, p. 194.

11 Orde, educated at Eton from 1755, went up to King’s in 1765, and was made a fellow in 1768. He was an amateur artist known for his etched caricatures of local Cambridge celebrities.

12 All Souls was founded in 1438 by Henry VI and Henry Chechele, Archbishop of Canterbury. Bolton was also responsible for the 19th-century copy of the Hacomblen chapel glass portrait which was originally in the Side-Chapel dedicated to the Founder, but now forms part of the exhibition in Side-Chapel D.

13 See H.G. Wayment, King’s College Chapel Cambridge: the Side-Chapel Glass, Cambridge 1988, p. 129, fn 32: the window is signed by J.P. Hegeland, and dated 1830. However, there seems to be some doubt about the rela-tionship of this to the window in the Chapel Side-Chapel, and the dating of the latter.

14 J. Saltmarsh, King Henry VI, p. 4.

I am grateful to the following for their help in the compilation of this article: Poppy Anderson, Norma Aubertin-Potter, Mat-thew Bailey, Lisa Burke, Maria Bussey, Patricia Edge, Ian Fenlon, Robert Franklin, Penny Hatfield, Penny Jenkins, Wai Kirkpatrick, Michael Meredith, Jean-Michel Massing, Patricia McGuire, Tim Moreton, David Munday, Daniel Partridge, Duncan Shawe-Taylor, Ian Thompson, and Lilah Wayment. Brendan Cole and Richard Lloyd Morgan kindly helped with photography.

Portraits of the founder at Eton and King's

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