Artist: Solomon Hart (1806-1881)
Year: 1839
Title: Lady Jane Grey at The Place of Her Execution
Materials: oil on canvas
Size: Unknown
Thoughts:
This painting shows Jane Grey on the morning of the 12th Feburary 1554. Standing in her black gown in the centre of the canvas, Jane looks up to the skies whilst being prepared for execution by her ladies. What appears to be the Duke of Suffolk is seen observing his daughter’s fate though the barred window of his cell at the top right-hand corner of the canvas.
The painting was given by the artist in 1879 to Plymouth to hang in the newly built Guildhall. It is now in the collection of Plymouth Museums Galleries though is not on public exhibition.
Exhibited at the Royal Academy of Art in 1839 and described in the catalouge as
389-Lady Jane Grey at the place of her execution-S. A Hart, A
“she was led to her execution by Sir John Gage, the Constable of the Tower, and attended by Feckenham, who was the Queen Mary’s Confessor and Abbot of Westminster, whose exhortations were to the last unavailing, disrobed by her attendant ladies, and, after saying the psalm Misere mei Deus, submitted to the axe of the executioner.” – See Heylin’s Ecclesia Restaurata, Stow, Godwyn and others.[1]
[1] Exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, MDCCCXXXIX (1839), Page 21
Lady Jane Grey Revisited 