The Shire Hall portrait of King Henry VIII
When we say a piece of art is lost, it doesn’t mean it’s intentionally hidden, buried somewhere for treasure hunters to find later. It just means we don’t know where it is right now. Often, lost pieces of art are not hidden but on full display. Sometimes, it just takes the right person to determine what it is. In the case of a lost royal portrait, it took someone online to do just that.
Adam Busiakiewicz is an art specialist who works as a consultant for Sotheby’s. He recently stumbled upon a post on Twitter/X from the official account of the Warwickshire Lieutenancy. The post was a simple image of a gathering at Shire Hall, the meeting place for the county council. Many paintings were on the walls in the background, but one in particular caught Busiakiewicz’s attention. It is a half-length portrait of King Henry VIII. After reaching out to the council and personally inspecting the work, Busiakiewicz confirmed that the painting is indeed a lost masterpiece commissioned by the tapestry maker Ralph Sheldon in the 1590s.
The Sheldon family is well-known among art scholars since they can trace over one hundred fifty surviving tapestries to their looms. The most famous of these are four large tapestry maps, each showing Warwickshire, Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, and Oxfordshire. Some Sheldon tapestries are now at major museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Victoria & Albert Museum. The Henry VIII portrait is, in fact, one of twenty-two round-top portraits that the Sheldon family commissioned showing prominent figures. The family originally kept these portraits at their home in the village of Long Compton, Warwickshire, where they were incorporated into the dining room’s architectural details. However, the family sold the paintings at auction in 1781. The locations of many of these paintings are unknown, but some are now in prominent collections. For example, the portrait of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey is now at the National Portrait Gallery, while Eton College has both Kings Henry VI and Henry VII.
Even though there is evidence that the portrait now kept at Shire Hall is one of the Sheldon portraits, there are still some gaps in the provenance. The Sheldon portrait was last sold at auction in 1908 at Christie’s, while the Warwickshire county council bought the Shire Hall portrait in 1951. More rigorous testing is needed to confirm that the two paintings are the same. Appropriately, the council has handed the painting over to the Museum Collections Centre in Warwick. Although Busiakiewicz did not valuate the portrait, other works from the Sheldon collection have previously sold for up to £200K. According to Busiakiewicz, “In any case, the painting’s current attribution to ‘Style of Hans Holbein’ is probably overdue an update!” Should the Shire Hall portrait be confirmed as one of the lost Sheldon portraits, it would be an incredible coincidence. Close to two centuries after leaving the Sheldon home, it would be rediscovered just twenty miles north.