Left: The Death of Amy Robsart. 1878. Oil on canvas. 110 7/8 x 74 1/4 inches (281.5 x 188.5 cm). Collection of Tate Britain, accession no. NO1609. Kindly made available on the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (CC BY-NC-ND). Right: The Death of Amy Robsart. 1878. Oil on canvas. 34 1/4 x 24 inches (87 x 61 cm). Collection of Nottingham City Museums & Galleries, accession no. NCM 1968-17. Kindly made available on the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial licence (CC BY-NC). [Click on the images to enlarge them.]
Amy Robsart was the first wife of Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester, who was the favourite of Queen Elizabeth I. Amy is now best known for falling down a flight of stairs to her death, the result of a broken neck. Despite an inquest finding her death to have been accidental, the circumstances of her demise were considered suspicious at the time and Robert Dudley was suspected of arranging her death. The ensuing scandal, however, ensured that Dudley was unable to marry Queen Elizabeth despite now being free to do so. Yeames's painting shows Amy lying dead at the bottom of a flight of stone stairs. She lies bathed in light and clad in a long white linen nightdress with a pale pink cloak trailing behind her. From the dark background Anthony Forster, a male courtier, looks down upon her body and holds back a male servant, perhaps so he won't discover the true nature of her death. The servant raises his hands up around his head in horror. To the upper right of the composition is a large window that allows light to stream down and illuminate Amy's body.
Amy Robsart was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1877, no.1027, and at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1878, no. 281. When it was exhibited in London it was accompanied in the catalogue by the following quotation from John Aubrey's History of Berkshire:
Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, being the great a favourite of Queen Elizabeth, it was thought she would have made him her husband; to the end, to free himself from all obstacles, he had his wife, Amy Robsart, confined to the solitary house of Cumnor Hall in Berkshire, inhabited by Anthony Forster, his servant. The same Forster, in compliance with what he well knew to be the Earl's wishes, came with others in the dead of night to the lady's bedchamber, stifled her in bed, and flung her downstairs, thereby believing the world would have thought it a mischance and so blinded their villainy; and the morning after, with the purpose that others should know of her end, did Forster on pretence of carrying out some behest of the Countess, bring a servant to the spot with the poor lady's body lay at the foot of the stairs.
Yeames would also have been familiar with the story through Sir Walter Scott's novel Kenilworth published in 1831.
Yeames's niece, Mary Stephen Smith, in discussing Yeames's pictures for 1877, stated: "and in the same year came his great, - perhaps his greatest picture, Amy Robsart. It created an immense sensation and was certainly the most popular picture of that year's Academy. Intensely arresting as to subject, and a masterpiece of foreshortening…This picture was purchased for £1000 by the President and Council of the Royal Academy under the terms of the Chantrey Bequest, and was, I believe, among the first works selected. It is now hangs in the Tate Gallery" (170-71). A second smaller version, painted the following year, and shown on the right above, is in the collection of the Nottingham City Museums & Galleries.
When the principal version was shown at the Royal Academy it proved extremely popular with the public, but surprisingly was not extensively reviewed by the critics. The Architect, for instance, found the work too theatrical: "Mr. W. F. Yeames's large canvas, Amy Robsart (1,027), is far too large. The subject is an incident of small artistic value, too painful for much realism, and theatrical without it. Still, the expressions are good; the action of horror – both hands lifted to the sides of the head – must have been studied from life" (347). A critic for The Art Journal felt this was the most ambitious picture Yeames had yet painted: "The impressive picture of Amy Robsart being discovered dead at the foot of the staircase in the solitary house of Cumnor Hall, Berkshire, gives character and importance to the Lecture Room. It is by far the most ambitious picture W. F. Yeames, A., has yet painted, and we rejoice to hear that the Academy authorities have devoted part of the Chantrey bequest to its purchase" (271). The Spectator merely mentioned it in passing: "while breadth is given to Mr. Yeames's very melodramatic Amy Robsart: (1043).
The Illustrated London News gave it a more extensive review. Having first quoted Aubrey's account, he describes Yeames as a "most powerful interpreter" of the episode: "The action of the drama is, it must be admitted, far from agreeable; but the same may be said of many of Paul Delaroche's most moving scenes drawn from Tudor and Stuart periods in our history. Mr. Yeames takes his art, as he has a right to do, au grande sérieux. It is essentially a tragedy which he has chosen to paint, and he has treated it from beginning to end in a duly tragic style. The drawing throughout is extremely able, and the entire work is nobly creditable to the school of which Mr. Yeames is so accomplished an exponent" (474).
Indeed, W. W. Fenn in The Magazine of Art felt the success of this canvas was one of the principal reasons Yeames was elected a full academician the year after its exhibition: "At the same time, be it remembered, this distinction was legitimately led up to by the important canvas, already noted, of Amy Robsart. Powerfully sensational, its impressiveness and force were in nowise marred by the exhibition of anything that could be termed repellent. The incident, whether as related in Aubrey's History of Berkshire or in the pages of Kenilworth, could hardly have been more admirably illustrated, and although it was the historian's description which inspired Mr. Yeames, according to the catalogue, the public accepted the picture readily as an interpretation of the great novelist's [i.e. Sir Walter Scott's] account of the heart-rending tragedy. Very difficult would it have been more skilfully to have realized the situation" (199).
Yeames had previously painted a portrait of Amy Robsart in 1864 that is currently in the collection of the Wolverhampton Art Gallery, accession no. OP535. This suggests that this subject was of longstanding interest to Yeames.
Bibliography
Blackburn, Henry. Academy Notes, Issue III. London: Chatto and Windus, 1877, 64-65.
The Death of Amy Robsart (Nottingham City Museums & Galleries). Art UK. Web. 1 September 2023.
The Death of Amy Robsart (Tate). Art UK. Web. 1 September 2023.
Fenn, W. W. "Our Living Artists. William Frederick Yeames R.A." The Magazine of Art IV (1881): 196-99.
Lambourne, Lionel. Victorian Painting, London: Phaidon Press, 1999. 144-6.
"Paintings at the Royal Academy." The Architect XVII (June 2, 1877): 346-47.
"A Royal Academy Album." The Spectator L (August 18, 1877): 1043-44.
"The Royal Academy." The Illustrated London News LXX (May 19, 1877): 474.
"The Royal Academy Exhibition." The Art Journal New Series XVI (1877): 269-72.
Stephen Smith, M. H. Art and Anecdote. Recollections of William Frederick Yeames, R.A. His Life and his Friends. London: Hutchinson & Co., 1927, 170-71.
Created 1 September 2023