Re-Visiting the Wrest Park Portrait: A Rebuttal

I received a flood of emails on Friday, 7 March 2025 alerting me to new widespread media interest in the Wrest Park Portrait, a painting on which I have previously published twice. It seems that the owner of the painting has pursued additional research through the esteemed Courtauld Institute of Art in London, with the assistance of English Heritage, the leading dendrochronologist Dr Ian Tyers, and others. Rachel Turnbull, Senior Collections Conservator at the Courtauld, now says of the painting, “It is possible that we are looking at the shadows of a once more royal portrait of Lady Jane Grey, toned down into subdued, Protestant martyrdom after her death.”[1] “We are not saying we’re sure,” Peter Moore, the curator at Wrest Park, said. “But there are these intriguing signs. We think it’s really fascinating — it’s not a closed book on this one.”[2]

I have only the published media reports to enable me to assess the “new evidence,” and the popular media is notorious for under-reporting and misreporting. I have not yet seen a complete formal written assessment from the Courtauld Institute. Therefore, what follows addresses only what the media has reported.

Let us examine the “new evidence.”

Dr Ian Tyers, one of the world’s foremost experts on the use of dendrochronology for panel paintings, has reassessed the panel and determined a fell date of circa 1539. Previous analysis by an unknown party had suggested 1541 as the likely fell date.[3] The two-year difference is insignificant, and this “new” evidence is, in my opinion, a red herring. While the Courtauld, as reported by the media, interprets the fell date to correlate with the period in which Jane Grey is most likely to have sat for a portrait, it also correlates with the timeframe I have previously proposed for the painting as a portrait of Mary, Lady Dacre, i.e., 1541-1558.[4] Thus the new dendrochronology results support both candidates as the sitter.

A cargo mark appears on the back of the boards, a detail not previously disclosed publicly. The media reports, and presumably the Courtauld as the media’s source, note that an “identical” mark appears on the back of an unidentified portrait of Jane’s cousin, King Edward VI.[5] The reports seem to imply that the presence of an identical mark on a “royal” portrait indicates that this must also be a “royal” portrait. This is another red herring, in my opinion. The majority of oak wood for English panel paintings was imported from the Eastern Baltic region near modern Latvia and Lithuania. The Tudor administration routinely granted import monopolies on various commodities, with only one company or individual authorized to import certain types of goods into England. I cannot yet confirm that a monopoly was granted for the importation of wood panels, but if so, it is reasonable to expect the same cargo mark to appear on all shipments to prevent smuggling. And it is logical, in turn, that multiple paintings depicting a very wide variety of royal and non-royal individuals would bear the same panel importation mark as a result of any monopoly. Even in the absence of an import monopoly, the market for wood panels in England was limited, so one would expect a correspondingly limited number of importers and a repetition of import marks on a wide variety of portraits. The import mark does not support any specific sitter identification.

“Her eyes, mouth, and ears were scratched out, suggesting a deliberate iconoclastic attack on her legacy as a Protestant martyr.”[6] The Times of London describes the scratches as “similar to ones made on a depiction of Grey which is held by the National Portrait Gallery” (NPG 6804, the Streatham Portrait).[7] The latter assertion by The Times is not strictly true. The marks on the Streatham Portrait (NPG 6804) are obvious Xs and are placed directly over both eyes and the mouth, as if to cancel out those features (“See no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil”). The marks on the Wrest Park Portrait are a series of individual linear scratches of varying length.

The longest runs from the upper center of the forehead downward through the middle end of the sitter’s left eyebrow, through the inner corner of the left eye, parallel alongside the nose and down the cheek, then through the left end of the lips and down beyond the chin. That scratch is intersected at the left corner of the lips by a horizontal scratch extending from the middle of the upper lip to the lower left cheek. A second vertical scratch roughly parallels the first and runs from a common origin to the upper eyelid. A third extends from the eyebrow to the lower cheek, again roughly paralleling the first two scratches. A fourth line runs from the left temple to the middle of the cheek, but it may as easily be dirt in a crevice of the uneven surface of the wood panel, a common occurrence in old paintings. Two additional scratches appear over the hood covering the left ear. If the scratches are the result of deliberate defacement in an act of iconoclasm, why do the sitter’s right eye and right ear remain unaffected? And why is the scratch associated with the mouth placed at the margin of the lips rather than over their center, as was done with NPG 6804? It is equally possible … even more likely, in my opinion … that the marks result from accidental damage incurred as the painting moved about between a variety of Dacre residences and the residences of subsequent owners. The placement of the marks on NPG 6804 are deliberate, as one would expect with an act of iconoclasm; those on the Wrest Park Portrait appear more random, as if from accidental damage.

“The original dress worn by the sitter was close to other depictions of Grey.”[8] This is an illogical point of argument if this is supposedly an authentic image from life. Virtually all other depictions of Jane Grey are either fictional images or misidentified portraits of other people. No authentic likeness of Jane Grey is known. The comparison is therefore specious.

“The coif she wears on her head has been changed from a hood to create a more Protestant look.”[9] I am not aware of any published scholarly research by costume historians arguing that a French hood worn in the early 1550s is necessarily emblematic or indicative of Roman Catholic beliefs on the part of the wearer or that a white coif denotes specifically Protestant beliefs. The premise is easily refuted by reference to the many paintings of Protestant English women of the Edwardian period wearing French hoods or to portraits of Mary of Scotland and other Roman Catholic women wearing white hoods. It is possible, however, that the change (if such a change was in fact made) occurred around the time of the reidentification, circa 1680, to correlate with the fashions of the Puritan Commonwealth period of the 1640s and 1650s. And it must be noted that although Robert White’s engraving of 1681 depicts the sitter wearing a modified French hood, he felt compelled to significantly embellish the entire costume to make it more “regal” in appearance. The white coif apparently did not match contemporary cultural expectations related to Jane’s appearance. The coif is another red herring, in my opinion.

“Changes … including to … the direction of her eyes.” The available reports do not offer an opinion on when in the life of the painting the direction of the eyes was changed. The change may well have been made by the original artist. Such changes by an original artist are known as pentimenti. Regardless, an alteration in the direction of the eyes does not support any one specific identification for the sitter. This too is a red herring, in my opinion.

“Many versions of the painting were made and have associations either with Grey or her family.”[10] This statement seems to imply that the sheer quantity of copies and variants serves as reliable verification of the identity of the sitter. Robert White produced the first engraving of this portrait in 1681, when the painting was still with the Dacre family. The Dacres had already reidentified the sitter as Jane Grey by that time for reasons discussed in my article in the British Art Journal (political affiliation with Protestants in the months prior to the Exclusion Crisis of 1682). It must be noted that a second portrait of Mary, Lady Dacre (NPG 6855) was reidentified by the Dacres before 1698 as a portrait of Jane’s mother Frances Brandon Grey, a further indication of the Dacre’s affinity for the Greys. White’s engraving was published in the first edition of the second volume of Gilbert Burnet’s ‘runaway bestseller’ The History of the Reformation of the Church of England.[11] It was one of the first widely published engravings of Jane. It became very popular, and the original painting was also repeatedly reproduced in oil during the eighteenth century, after the reidentification of the sitter as Jane Grey, for use in various residences owned by the Earls and Dukes of Kent. But quantity does not necessarily equate with authenticity. The Althorp Portrait has also been published repeatedly as an engraving and as a supposedly authentic portrait of Jane Grey, yet it clearly predates Jane’s birth and depicts a fictionalized Mary Magdalene. This piece of evidence is yet another red herring, in my opinion.

Thus, the individual bits of evidence, while useful in their own right for documenting the portrait more thoroughly than previously, actually contribute little or nothing toward reliably identifying the sitter. The book to which Peter Moore referred may not yet be closed, but I stand firmly by my previously published evidence and argument that the painting is a portrait of Mary Nevill Fiennes, Lady Dacre created in the late 1540s or early 1550s and relabeled late in the seventeenth century as Lady Jane Grey by Lady Dacre’s direct descendants and heirs in an effort to convey visually their sympathies with the Protestant party during the Exclusion Crisis of the 1680s.

J. Stephan Edwards, PhD, FSA
Palm Springs, California
8 March 2025

Addendum, 12 March 2025:

Media reports state, “Infrared reflectography … revealed that the sitter’s dress was significantly altered sometime after the original image’s completion. A white scarf was added over Grey’s shoulders and changes to the sleeve may suggest that decorative detailing was removed or that the sitter had previously appeared with a scarf instead wrapped around her lower arms, which would be consistent with other depictions of Grey.”[12]

“The linen cap, or coif, covering her hair also appears significantly altered. A coif with a different shape and potentially even a hood, which is a fancier headpiece worn over a coif, can be seen around her face in the scans. The researchers suggested a veil may even have been present at one point before being painted out.”[13]

These reports raise a number of questions.

It is indeed apparent that a scarf, referred to in the Tudor era as a neckerchief, was added to the original image. The upper arms are fully visible beneath the neckerchief in an infrared reflectographic image of the painting (below). That paintwork would have been unnecessary had the neckerchief always been present.

But when were these alterations made? Were they made by the original artist only weeks or months after creation of the original image? Or were they instead made decades later in response to the new emergence of a myth that Jane necessarily dressed in somber attire? The media coverage fails to address these critically important questions.

While my experience interpreting images obtained by infrared reflectography is admittedly limited, I see no evidence whatsoever in full-sized versions of the above image of any alterations to the headgear, properly referred to as a bonnet or hood (coifs are close-fitting and worn beneath other headgear). Perhaps any formal written report generated by the Courtauld or English Heritage describes this supposed change more precisely.

The media reports go on to speculate that the neckerchief was added (and the hood “possibly” altered) in a deliberate effort to make the image conform to one of “subdued, Protestant martyrdom.” I cannot find any published scholarship to indicate that plain white hoods and white neckerchiefs over the shoulders are iconographic symbols denoting either Protestantism or martyrdom. Numerous portraits surviving from the Tudor period include similar or identical costume elements worn by women who were demonstrably neither Protestant nor martyrs. See, for example, Hans Holbein’s portraits of Jane Pemberton Small (ca.1536), of the wife of a servant of Henry VIII (1534), of an unidentified woman dated 1541, and of a lady with a squirrel, as well as a portrait by an unknown artist depicting Alice Bradbridge Barnham and her sons Martin and Steven ca.1557. The common thread amongst these women is neither their religion nor martyrdom. It is instead their socio-economic status. Small was the wife of a cloth merchant, for example, while Barnham was a silk merchant in her own right. Another is explicitly identified as the wife of one of Henry VIII’s servants. None share Lady Jane Grey’s aristocratic status.

The altered garb worn by the sitter in the Wrest Park Portrait reflects that sitter’s socio-economic status, not her religious conviction. Mary Nevill Fiennes was a woman without aristocratic title or status between the execution of her first husband in June 1541 and the successful reclamation of his titles and estates in November 1558. The dendrochronological analysis indicates that this portrait dates to precisely Lady Dacre’s period of diminished status, and the portrait accurately reflects that status.

NOTES: 

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g08z0wnvxo

[2] https://www.thetimes.com/uk/history/article/nine-day-queen-lady-jane-grey-bedfordshire-82tlqx9wl

[3] Lost Faces: Identity and Discovery in Tudor Royal Portraiture, edited by Bendor Grosvenor (London: Philip Mould, Ltd., 2007), 85.

[4] J. Stephan Edwards, “A Life Framed in Portraits: An Early Portrait of Mary Nevill Fiennes, Lady Dacre”, The British Art Journal Vol. XIV, No. 2 (January 2014), 14-20.

[5] https://apnews.com/article/jane-grey-queen-england-portrait-wrest-park-760d15fa05a579e1e8f5c7836df41d4a

[6] https://news.artnet.com/art-world/is-this-the-only-known-portrait-of-lady-jane-grey-the-doomed-teen-royal-2616092

[7] https://www.thetimes.com/uk/history/article/nine-day-queen-lady-jane-grey-bedfordshire-82tlqx9wl

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Burnet’s History was reissued in four editions between 1681 and 1715, and it has been reprinted dozens of times since. It remains readily available today.

[12] Jo Lawson-Tancred, “Is This the Only Known Portrait of Lady Jane Grey, the Doomed Teen Royal?”, ArtNet.com, 7 March 2025.

[13] Amarichi Orie, “Is this the only known portrait of England’s doomed ‘Nine Days Queen’?,” CNN.com, 7 March 2025.