Learning About British-ness at the National Portrait Gallery in London Posted on January 18th, 2010 by

The National Portrait Gallery is located on Charing Cross Road, close to Trafalgar Square in London, and is within walking distance from our flats at the Janet Poole House in Bloomsbury.  The National Portrait Gallery is very close to where we saw Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night as a group the night before. On display are over 1,000 portraits featuring men and women who have shaped British history from the Middle Ages to the present day.  The efforts of Philip Henry Stanhope led to the Gallery’s foundation in 1865.  Above the entrance of the Gallery are the busts of three men; Stanhope is in the middle flanked by those of Thomas Babington Macaulay and Thomas Carlyle, two of Stanhope’s staunchest supporters in establishing the Gallery. The National Portrait Gallery was established with the criteria that the Gallery was not about art, but instead to focus on history and t he status of the sitter, rather than the quality or character of a particular image considered as a work of art. This criterion is still used by the Gallery today when deciding which works enter the National Portrait Gallery’s collection.

Our tour guide took us on a journey that focused mainly on the chronological history of Great Britain from the 16th century with King Henry VIII to the time period surrounding their loss of the American colonies, resulting in American Independence.  She chose several specific portraits along the way to explain and interpret thoroughly that coincided best with her historical story.  Symbols of power, rule, wealth and ornamentation were very common in most of the portraits, many showing that the sitter was ready to defend their country and they were ready to strike.  These symbols were shown to us as the guide talked about Queen Elizabeth I and the portraits of her.  Our guide took a great amount of time talking about Queen Elizabeth I and the different portraits of her in the Gallery.  I found it interesting that Elizabeth held the masculine role of King and ruler while maintaining her femininity and youthfulness throughout her life, which is shown in the portraits of her.  She was the virgin Queen who never married, she would always claim that she was married to her country instead.  The idea of British-ness was brought up frequently by the tour guide.  She tried to explain, through the portraits, how certain aspects of the British identity were formed through these historical figures, such as their love of law and fair play.

Throughout the tour, I started to comprehend more and more of our guide’s ideas about Britain.  The way she talked about things and what she highlighted started to show how British-ness is very important to the people and how they think about their country.  The way the tour guide mentioned some things and didn’t mention others was very interesting to me, which I will talk about later in this blog.  I could tell that she was very proud to be British and seemed to support everything Britain stood for.  To me, the way she talked about Scotland, Ireland and Wales showed how she thought of them as second-class citizens to the English.  She appeared skeptical when she mentioned how Scotland and Wales are looking for potential independence in the future, saying that England holds all of the wealth and that Ireland had to rely on the support of the European Union after their independence.  The history between England and Ireland is a tumultuous one and I thought it was interesting to hear the British side of the story.

During my experience at the National Portrait Gallery, the most revealing part of the tour was when we got to the portrait of Oliver Cromwell.  She seemed to stand very strongly behind him, claiming that he was the embodiment of British ideals.  This was revealed when she said, “the only thing that went wrong was that he didn’t have a good son to carry on his crown.”  I thought this was very interesting because I have some background knowledge of Cromwell.  In 2008, I traveled throughout London, Ireland, and Northern Ireland on a J-term course studying the continuing troubles and violence between Ireland and the United Kingdom.  The guide never did mention that Cromwell was a brutal killer who led numerous massacres in Ireland in the 17th century.  He killed innocent civilians, Roman-Catholic priests and burned towns.  Cromwell’s harshness and hostility to the Irish was religious (England was predominantly Protestant, while Ireland was predominantly Catholic) as well as political.  In the wake of Cromwell, the public practice of Catholicism was banned and Catholic priests were murdered when captured.  All Catholic-owned land was confiscated and given to English and Scottish settlers.  Cromwell never accepted that he was responsible for the killing of civilians in Ireland.  Today, people in Ireland still hold onto a strong feeling of revenge for the brutality Cromwell imposed upon their ancestors.  There are even elaborate murals created in his dishonor that I saw on the Nationalist (predominantly Catholic) side of Belfast, Northern Ireland.  I think that it would have been interesting to ask our tour guide about this to see how she would have responded.  Regardless of what our tour guide didn’t say about Cromwell, she did tell us that Cromwell was the first truly Republican leader of England and he started the idea of a Constitutional Monarchy.

In conclusion, The National Portrait Gallery was a great learning experience that gave me insight into how some British people may sweep certain details under the rug.  Not revealing these details helps to defend their ancestors by only exposing the glorious side of the story.  This leads me to believe that most cultures follow the same trend; telling history from their own perspective in a way that boosts their own status at the expense of others.  I feel that learning history from our textbooks gives us only half of the story, the other half is learned through experience in another culture.  It was interesting to be able to get a productive learning experience by knowing background information that many people really may not by putting the two opposing cultural views together.  The tour was eye-opening and it gave me great insight into British thinking and identity.

 

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