Imagined lives out of false portraits

Copyright: © National Portrait Gallery, London
NPG 1173: Unknown woman, formerly known as Margaret Tudor (1489-1541)
By an unknown artist

In the wake of reports of Brontë portraits selling well and Austen portraits causing controversy (follow that link for comments on the portrait recently championed by Paula Byrne on BBC2, from Claire Harman and others, and a couple more here), here's a question posed by the National Portrait Gallery: what do you do with all the discredited images of princes, aristocrats, writers? Such as the one above, of an unknown woman, formerly known as Mary, Queen of Scots.

Visiting an art gallery, as the curator Tarnya Cooper observes, almost inevitably involves an encounter with the "unknown" – with unknown men or women, faces once thought interesting or important enough to be worth recording (or kindly misrepresenting, you might say). Early collectors tended to be "overzealous" in their identification and labelling of portraits; no wonder the NPG's postbag now "bulges with requests to help identify the people depicted in historic portraits".

The strength of later doubts is obvious from the consistency of the adverbs on display in Room 33, where Imagined Lives: Portraits of unknown people is now on display, following an earlier version of this small exhibition at Montacute House in Somerset:

"Probably Sir Robert Dudley (1574–1649), formerly known as Sir Thomas Overbury (1581–1613)."

"Unknown man, possibly William Drummond of Hawthornden (1585–1649)."

"Unknown man, fomerly known as James Scott, Duke of Monmouth and Buccleuch (1649–85)."

And of the artists responsible for these portraits, only two can be tentatively identified. . . .

Unless you're the lucky art historian who turns up a letter or some other piece of evidence that can transform a "possibly" into a "definitely", there's little choice but to carry on warily speculating – something that Imagined Lives turns to its advantage in turning to a band of well-known writers, including John Banville, Tracy Chevalier, Terry Pratchett and Minette Walters, and seeing what they can do with the Unknown. The writers' responses may be seen both in the gallery, and in the form of a short book.

The results are like the outcome of a (slightly posh) writers' group exercise. Some contributors opt for the route of the sitter speaking for him or herself (by letter or diary), others adopt a curatorial tone ("The commissioning of the portrait reflects his assurance and status as a composer"). Julian Fellowes has re-identified the woman who used to be known as Margaret Tudor (above) as Blanche Vavasour, Lady Marchmont (1497–1558). "Dressed in widow's weeds, she wears a downcast look as well as a distinctive brooch. . . ." Or there's "False Mary", now shown by Alexander McCall Smith to be useful to the real one, Mary, Queen of Scots:

"After the slaughter of her Italian secretary, David Rizzio . . . she formed the view that she needed to employ a body double. This device was later to be used by a variety of shady twentieth-century dictators . . . ."

Copyright: © National Portrait Gallery, London
NPG 96: Unknown woman, formerly known as Mary, Queen of Scots (154287)
Unknown artist c.1570

Of course, if you think can do better than that, the NPG would like to hear from you: there's a monthly competition for aspiring practitioners of this particular form of ekphrasis. . . .

Comments

[Andrew McCulloch]

I wonder if we might turn the game on its head for a moment and try to imagine what those who have been mistaken for more illustrious others might have made of matters. For example, we might assume there to be no greater accolade than to be mistaken for Shakespeare although, from his expression, this hardly seems to be a view shared by the subject of the 'Janssen portrait', once thought to be a picture of William Shakespeare (see post '77 Shakespeares' Oct. 28, 2011). With barely concealed contempt, he seems rather to be ready to outstare all those with the temerity to compare him to some jobbing penny-a-liner from the provinces.

[Michael Caines]

Great idea – although all the indignant/supposed "Shakespeares" would probably need a room to themselves.

At least these two would be able to pass the time a little more happily than the rest of them:

http://cdm15082.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/p252501coll1/id/4585

[Andrew McCulloch]

A beautifully imagined moment, not least for the way it catches their blissful ignorance of how soon Jonson will start to be criticised for NOT being Shakespeare!