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Gad, I
love this picture; behold the wonders of 19th Century Academic Art
in all its glory. Be warned, though: the
current art establishment believes The
Execution of Lady Jane Grey to be little better than kitsch, and admiration
for Delaroche’s technical virtuosity, theatrical sense and incomparable
draftsmanship a sign of antiqued and louche
taste.
Paul Delaroche’s (1797-1857) remarkable drawing
and sense of composition, the picture’s almost licked finish, and its sense of history tinged with Romanticism is
everything that Modernism has rejected.
Delaroche, in fact, was too brilliant too late. The very earliest proponents of Modernism
began to disdain his achievement – Van Gogh
called Delaroche one of the “very bad history painters” and affected to hate
his work. If we make a riposte to Van
Gough through the mists of time, we must make sure to address his good ear…
The
Execution of Lady Jane Grey was bequeathed to the Tate Gallery in the early 20th Century, and had been
banished to storage by 1928. In 1974,
the picture was resurrected for show at the National Gallery. And there,
something quite remarkable happened. The
public, neither interested in, nor gulled by, mainstream art historians
discovered the picture and lined up to see it.
Delaroche’s work has proven so popular that the wooden floor before it
must be polished far more often than other spots in the gallery.
And no
wonder. Look at everything that
Delaroche does in this picture. There
are only five life-size figures, and they are superbly and dramatically placed
within the frame. Lady Jane Grey was
the great-grand-daughter of Henry VII,
and, at 17, she was named successor to the throne of England by her cousin, Edward VI. The plan, at least, was that the crowning of Protestant
Jane would shore up Protestantism and keep Catholic influence at bay. However, her claim on the crown was too weak,
and she reigned for a scant nine days, after which she was deposed and executed
for treason by the rightful monarch, Edward’s half-sister, Mary Tudor. Delaroche sets
his scene in the Tower of London on the morning of the execution, February 12,
1554.
The girl
(little more than a child) is behaving with magnificent poise, which makes the
emotional scene more poignant. She is on
the scaffold and dressed only her undergarments. Her clothes are piled beside her
lady-in-waiting, who has collapsed in grief against the left wall. Her other handmaiden faces the wall, the
horror to come too much to bear.
Grey,
blindfolded, reaches out for the chopping block where, moments later, her head
will be cleaved from her body. Sir John Brydges, the lieutenant of the
Tower, gently guides her to her death; his heart-breaking solicitude increases
the emotional pitch of the picture. Even
the executioner directs his gaze away, awed by the enormity of the sin he is
about to commit. Look at how he shifts
his weight to one leg, his right hand almost releasing the axe. Delaroche manages to depict different emotional
reactions from the players of this tragedy, inspiring a multitude of emotional
responses from us, the viewer.
Preparatory Drawing By Delaroche
If yesterday’s picture, The Children of Edward, fills us with melancholy, Jane Grey is deeply, wrenchingly, viscerally moving.
Wisely,
Delaroche keeps the representation of their surroundings to minimal gray-tones
and subtle stone carvings. The bare
stage, if you will, maintains focus on the figures and the deeply human connection
is never lost. The one non-human touch
of any significance is the straw surrounding the block; this, if nothing else,
underscores the horror to come when we realize that it is there to soak up the
young girl’s blood.
If we
wonder how or why Delaroche was able to connect so viscerally with this
particular historical incident, it would do well to remember that only a scant
40 years earlier, Delaroche’s countrymen cut off the heads of their own
aristocracy.
By any
cultural yardstick, this is a magnificent and moving painting.
More Delaroche tomorrow.
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