Rediscovering Royalty: A Forgotten Portrait of Henry VIII Resurfaces

Collectors and historians alike know how exciting it is to find something you recognize in an unexpected place. As art historian Adam Busiakiewicz described in a blog post on July 4, he was scrolling through social media site X (previously called Twitter) and caught a glimpse of a painting in the background of a photo taken at Warwick Shire Hall, posted by the Warwickshire Lieutenancy.

Judges’ Drawing Room of Warwick Old Shire Hall, posted by @Warkslieutenant on ‘X’ dated 04.07.24

Dr. Busiakiewicz immediately recognized the painting’s unusual frame with an arched top. The frame’s shape was characteristic of a set of portraits commissioned by politician Ralph Sheldon for Weston House, his Warwickshire home, in the 1590s. Today, some of these portraits are on display in galleries, and some are in private collections. But the whereabouts of the painting of the most famous figure in the set, Tudor king (and collector of miniatures) Henry VIII, were unknown.

Busiakiewicz was familiar with the “Sheldon set,” having researched one of them, a portrait of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, for Sotheby’s in 2023. A closer look at the painting in the photo confirmed that the frames looked the same. An 1839 engraving of Sheldon’s paintings on display at Weston House included a portrait of Henry VIII with what Busiakiewicz called the same “rather cramped composition.”

An engraving of the Upper End of the Old Dining Room at Weston, Warwickshire,
published in Henry Shaw, Details of Elizabethan Architecture, London 1839, Plate 3

The painting at Warwick Shire Hall is now presumed to be the missing portrait, but a historian’s work is apparently never done. Busiakiewicz is still researching the painting, looking for details to confirm its identity and determine its provenance.

This is not the only recent rediscovery in Warwickshire of an artifact relating to Henry VIII. Last year, an amateur metal detectorist found a pendant with the symbols and initials of the king and his first wife, Katherine of Aragon, whom he married in 1509.

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