The serial wife-killer stands plump and cocksure in the National Portrait Gallery, flaunting a dagger. Hans Holbein’s lifesize drawing of Henry VIII is undoubtedly the greatest work of art in this museum of pictures of British people. But should such a murderous tyrant be celebrated in our gallery of national heroes at all?
Henry Tudor was surely a worse human being than Kids Company founder Camila Batmanghelidjh, whose portrait recently vanished from the National Portrait Gallery wall just as her public reputation took a nose dive. It is one of a whole bunch removed to make space for current exhibitions, but reports state that there are no plans for this painting by Dean Marsh to be rehung. If the much-criticised charity boss really has been permanently mothballed by the NPG, it reveals something profoundly primitive in our attitude to portraits.
For, of course, Henry VIII belongs on the wall, and so does Batmanghelidjh. Both happen to be excellent portraits of interesting people. Marsh painted his flamboyantly fashion-conscious sitter in the style of an 18th century orientalist. It’s one of the cleverest works commissioned recently by the gallery. The trouble is that there’s a widespread, deep-seated idea that portraiture is an honour accorded the virtuous, a record of the good, the honourable, the admired and the brilliant.
This belief that portraiture is a merit award goes back a long way. In the Doge’s Palace in Venice hangs a gallery of portraits of all the doges who ever ruled the Venetian Republic – except one. The portrait of Marino Faliero, who tried to usurp greater power in Venice in the 14th century, has been replaced by a painting of a black shroud bearing the words, “This is the space reserved for Marino Faliero, beheaded for his crimes.”
Perhaps the NPG should adopt this policy and replace the portraits of people who fall from grace with blacked out canvases for, as public shame spreads across the land, its contemporary heroes are dropping like flies. We are unlikely to see its full-length portrait of Rolf Harris, photographed by Polly Borland in 1999 with an extra leg, on the wall any time soon; as it happens it has been in the stores since 2000 although it remains, and will remain, in the collection and can be viewed online. Probably if it did hang on the wall (so much more prestigious than a website) there would be complaints. But why? We should not expect everyone in the NPG to be a hero. If it is to reflect life it has to make space for villains. Indeed, the gallery’s founding principles from 1857 declare that its custodians must document celebrity without bias: “Nor will they consider great faults and errors, even though admitted on all sides, as any sufficient ground for excluding any portrait which may be valuable as illustrating the civil history of the country.”
We judge people less the remoter they are in time. No one objects to the NPG hanging the portrait of Oliver Cromwell, guilty of spilling his country’s blood, or Warren Hastings, corrupt architect of the empire over India. But when it bought a painting of Gerry Adams, it was attacked for “venerating” the Sinn Féin leader. Adams undoubtedly has an enigmatic past, but he also has a firm place in history as a key participant in Northern Ireland’s peace process – an interesting moral ambiguity.
Aren’t we all? Morally ambiguous, that is. From Winston Churchill, whose bad idea of attacking Gallipolli caused many needless deaths a century ago, to Margaret Thatcher, not popular with everyone, the NPG is full of people who deserve to be seen as actors in history, not given points for supposed good or bad behaviour.
Rushing to judgment is for twitchy Twitter users, not for art galleries.
