Interpreting history

Painting History: Delaroche and Lady Jane Grey
National Gallery, until 23 May

Just up the road from where I write is the dramatic ruin of Framlingham Castle, the historical seat of the Howard family and the Dukes of Norfolk. The castle was granted to Princess Mary by her half-brother King Edward VI, and she took refuge there when on Edward’s death his second cousin Lady Jane Grey was named as his successor, rather than she herself. The country was in the grip of its worst period of internal religious strife, which Protestant Edward had tried to avoid by commending devoutly Protestant Jane to the crown. But the Catholics would have none of it, and Mary’s star was very soon in the ascendant. She rode from Framlingham to London to lead the counter-coup which would unseat Lady Jane Grey, and which would result in her own coronation as Mary I, soon to earn the nickname of Bloody Mary.

I mention this here because the centrepiece of this new exhibition is one of the most popular paintings in the National Gallery, ‘The Execution of Lady Jane Grey’, by Paul Delaroche (1797–1856). For the duration of this show, the public will have to pay to see it, in company with other paintings by Delaroche and some by his contemporaries. The first question to be addressed is whether the display mounted around it is worth the hefty admission charge (£8 or concessions). At once the chief problem with exhibitions using the Sainsbury Wing emerges — its inflexibility. There are a certain number of rooms there, and exhibitions are deemed to have to fill them. Why? Value for money, I suspect. Perhaps if half the rooms were shut off the public would baulk at the admission charge.