Portraits of Katherine Parr

Katherine Parr

c.1545

Master John

Oil on panel | 71 in. x 37 in. (1803 mm x 940 mm)

National Portrait Gallery | NPG 4451

Katherine Parr

After Master John

Oil on canvas | 72 7/8 x 42 7/8 in. (185.1 x 108.9 cm.)

Christie's

Katherine Parr

George Perfect Harding

MutualArt

Katherine Parr

After George Perfect Harding

The Saleroom

Queen Katherine Parr

c.1543-1546

The Hastings or Melton Constable Portrait

Oil on canvas | 980 x 670 mm

National Trust | NT 1276906

According to J. Stephan Edwards, it is in oils, and is presently on canvas. The painting was reportedly originally on wood panel, but was supposedly transferred to a canvas backing in 1893. The transfer was not easily accomplished, so that considerable restoration was required. He references Christopher Hussey, ‘Melton Constable Hall’, Country Life 64, nos. 1652 and 1653 (15 and 22 September 1928), 364–370 and 402–409.

This portrait was owned by the Astleys at Hillmorton by 1770. John Astley's first wife was Katherine Champernowne, Elizabeth I's beloved Kat Ashley.

As the step-mother and governess of Elizabeth I Tudor, the two women probably knew each other. The portrait of Katherine Parr was therefore probably a gift directly from Katherine Parr to Kat Ashley, the other mother figure in her step-daughter's life, in the same way the Glendon Hall or NPG 4451 is now thought to have been a direct gift from Queen Katherine Parr to her cousin Maud. Glendon Hall once belonged to sir Ralph Lane, who married Maud Parr, a cousin and lady-in-waiting to Katherine Parr.

The Astleys longstanding tradition that this portrait is Lady Jane Grey is probably because John Astley's second wife and the mother of his children was Margaret Lenton or Grey, Lady Jane Grey's first cousin. She was the illegitimate daughter of Lord Thomas Grey, who was executed together with his brother, Henry Grey, Duke of Suffolk, and niece, Lady Jane Grey, for having participated in Thomas Wyatt's rebellion in 1554, and the mother of Sir John Astley, whose 'children had all predeceased him, and his estates passed to his ‘cousin’ Jacob, Lord Astley, the royalist general,'[1] the ancestor of the Astleys who owned Hillmorton in 1770. John Astley's first marriage to Kat Ashley had been childless.

Margaret Lenton or Grey was probably the original owner of the Chawton Portrait of her other cousin Lady Katherine Grey, which can be traced back to the family of the widow of one of her direct descendants.

Katherine Parr by Levina Teerlinc – The Sudeley Miniature

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This miniature was previously in the Strawberry Hill Collection of Horace Walpole by at least 1774.

1774 Description: Within the cabinet of enamels and miniatures...Katharine Parr; by Holbein: a most scarce head, and exactly like the picture of her at the earl of Denbigh’s at Nuneham Padox, Warwickshire 

Katherine Parr

Oil on panel | 34 in. x 24 in.

The Earldom of Jersey Trust – Radier Manor

Beautiful early photo of the Jersey Portrait, once thought to depict Lady Jane Grey. The frame is magnificent and dates from when the portrait was in the Stowe House collection and thought to be a depiction of Mary Tudor by Hans Holbein. Lady Jane Grey Revisited on Twitter

290 Queen Mary, in a black dress, with richly ornamented sleeves – (Ditto) Ryman 70 7 0 The two preceding portraits were purchased, a few years since, at a sale at Prior's Bank, near Fulham. Stowe catalogue, priced and annotated: by Henry Rumsey Forster by Christie, Manson & Woods

For more about this portrait and others once found at Stowe see The Stowe House Portraits at Lady Jane Grey Revisited.

Katherine Parr

Late 16th century

Oil on panel | 25 in. x 20 in. (635 mm x 508 mm)

National Portrait Gallery | NPG 4618

Queen Katherine Parr

c.18th century

British (English) School

Oil on canvas | 557 x 394 mm

National Trust – Anglesey Abbey | NT 515505

Item 3. The Lady Jane Grey, in a crimson dress. The Manuscript Room Miniature Portrait. The Stowe House Portraits – Lady Jane Grey Revisited

Katherine Parr as Lady Jane Grey

Due to the Van de Passe engraving in Herωologia Anglica (1620) called Lady Jane Grey, but based on a portrait of Katherine Parr of the Melton Constable or Hastings Portrait and the miniature at Stowe type, has 

Engraving by Adrian van Derbyshire Werff (1659-1722), based on the Van da Passe engraving of Lady Jane Grey in Herωologia Anglica. 

I present a couple of particularly beautiful examples of this tradition here.

Portrait of a lady, half-length, in a jewel-encrusted dress and an ermine-trimmed red cape

Manner of Hans Holbein

Oil on panel | 14¼ x 10 in. (36.2 x 25.5 cm)

Christie's

Notes:

[1] Sir John Astley (Ashley) (c.1569-1640) of Old Palace, Maidstone, Kent – History of Parliament