Focus on Streatham portrait and explore the Description.
The three-quarter-length portrait measures 85.6 cm × 60.3 cm (33.7 in × 23.7 in), and is painted with oil on Baltic oak. A faded inscription, reading "Lady Jayne" or "Lady Iayne", is in the upper-left corner, above the woman's shoulders. The sitter is described by art critic Charlotte Higgins as a slender and "demure, pious young woman", and has been tentatively identified as Lady Jane Grey. Ives notes a familial resemblance between the sitter and Grey's sisters, Catherine and Mary, which "may give conjectural support" to the identification of Grey.The subject wears an opulent red gown with turned-back trumpet sleeves and a partlet with standing collar; the latter is embroidered with a fleur-de-lis pattern, the heraldic emblem of French royalty. The design on her  underskirt shows a pattern variously identified as strawberries, gilliflowers, Scots thistles or pinks; the last of these was an emblem of the Grey family. A French hood on her head covers most of her red hair. She wears numerous pieces of jewellery, including a necklace finished with medallions and pearls; these indicate a person of high social and economic status, which is reinforced by the silk and velvet of her gown. The sitter is not, however, wearing a wedding ring, suggesting she was not yet married. Instead she is holding a prayer book. This type of costume was popular during the Tudor period, particularly in the 1550s, and the accuracy of its depiction has been used to advance the portrait's authenticity as a depiction of Jane Grey.The independent historian J. Stephan Edwards writes, however, that the fleur-de-lis give him pause as, before June 1553, Jane "would have had no right to the French heraldic emblems" as she was not yet an heir to the throne. After the discovery of an inscribed portrait of Catherine Parr, in 2014 Edwards published a tentative identification of said painting as the original on which the Streatham portrait was based. He wrote that the Parr painting had been "adapted to 'become' Jane Grey in the absence of an accessible authentic portrait" in the Streatham portrait and similar, supporting this with an analysis of the similar styles of dress and the jewellery (including a necklace of festooned pearls).Reception of the painting as a work of art has been predominantly negative. The historian David Starkey described it as "an appallingly bad picture and there's absolutely no reason to suppose it's got anything to do with Lady Jane Grey", a sentiment which the art dealer Christopher Foley rejected. Tarnya Cooper of the National Portrait Gallery gave less sharp criticism, stating "it's a paint-by-number, labored copy", and "its value is as a historical document rather than a work of art". Zarin describes the painting as looking bleached in comparison with other portraits of monarchs, with "the flat face of a paper doll". Edwards writes "the quality might be described as naive, primitive, or even folk art".
National Portrait Gallery Mary Lady Jane Grey gilliflower Scots thistles Streatham Tudor period strawberries fleur-de-lis prayer book festoon underskirt French hood David Starkey Catherine J Baltic Catherine Parr left partlet pinks Charlotte Higgins