Left: Whole painting. Right: Closer view of the younger of the princes.
The Princes in the Tower by Henrietta Ward (1832-1924). Exhibited 1864. Oil on canvas. H 61 x W 54.5 cm. Accession number 30; gift from Robert Taylor Heape, 1902. Photo credit: Rochdale Arts & Heritage Service, kindly made available via Art UK on the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial licence (CC BY-NC). Image download, text and formatting by Jacqueline Banerjee, with an additional note by Pamela Gerrish Nunn. [Click on both iamages to enlarge them.]
Ward explained in her Reminiscences,
Here the elder of the princes is seen seated — his finely formed head, rich in luxuriant hair, and still preserving traits of beauty, though touched with sorrow, resting on his hand. The dungeon-Uke atmos- phere of the place is revealed by the scanty light that struggles fitfully in through a tiny grating, and to the door of the prison Gloucester, bearing the stamp of villainy in every feature, has brought the younger boy, who starts in dismay at the sight of his brother — a prisoner. This picture was well noticed in the Art Journal. [160]
The dramatic moment that Ward has chosen to depict here is different from the one that Millais would chose later: not the approach of the murderer towards the unsuspecting brothers, but the emotional blow to each of them at finding the other similarly incarcerated. The painting is notable for expressing the artist's own empathy, as if she too could hardly bear to look at this abuse of innocence, as well as for eliciting sympathy from the observor. The half-eaten apple on the table is a particularly poignant detail.
Note by Pamela Gerrish Nunn
The lugubrious fate of the brothers Edward V and the Duke of York was a passage from British history fascinating to the Victorian public. The topic was perhaps best known through Shakespeare’s Richard III, which takes the line that their uncle Richard of Gloucester ordered their deaths so that he could accede to the throne.
Ward would have been fully aware of the familiarity of the story to her viewers – indeed, reviews of the 1864 Academy exhibition where it appeared talked of "that hackneyed theme, the children in the Tower" and "such time-worn materials" – and she would also have known that the image already in viewers’ minds was probably the French painter Delaroche’s version of the subject, a huge success in 1830. She retains the domestic trappings of Delaroche’s composition, although substituting the meal-table for his bed, and attempts a more complex interaction of figures, including the sinister figure of Richard urging the younger boy to enter the chamber of doom where the young king seems already to be pondering their melancholy destiny.
This painting was generally well received as a step up from the artist’s earlier work and an original take on the well-known drama, although those critics who were routinely hostile to female artists carped that the young king’s pose had been copied from the Delaroche composition. It entered the important modern art collection of Henry Wallis, from whence it was sold in 1871, and was donated to the public collection of Rochdale in 1901.
Link to related material
Bibliography
Anon. “Monthly Journal.” >span class="periodical">Art Journal 1 May 1864: 154.
The Princes in the Tower. Art UK. Web. 11 March 2022.
Strong, Roy. And when did you last see your father? The Victorian painter and British history. London: Thames and Hudson, 1978.
Ward, Henrietta. Mrs E.M. Ward’s Reminiscences. Ed. E, O’Donnell.London: Pitman 1911. Internet Archive. Contributed by Cornell University Library. Web. 11 March 2022.
Created 11 March 2022