A revelatory new exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, Elizabeth I & Her People, explores for the first time the achievements of the Elizabethan period through portraits of the queen, nobility and rising middle classes.

This exhibition includes not only some of the most important and visually impressive portraits of Elizabeth I and her courtiers, but also intriguing lesser-known images of Elizabethan merchants, lawyers, goldsmiths, butchers, calligraphers, playwrights and artists – all of whom contributed to the making of a nation and a new world power.

Elizabeth I & Her People shows how members of a growing wealthy middle class sought to have their likenesses captured for posterity as the mid-sixteenth-century interest in portraiture broadened. Portraits of courtiers such as William Cecil, Christopher Hatton, Bess of Hardwick and Elizabeth Vernon are joined by explorers such as Francis Drake and Martin Frobisher, ambassadors such as Abd el-Quahed ben Messaoud, financiers such as Thomas Gresham and poets including John Donne.

The reign of Queen Elizabeth I, which spanned over 40 years, was a time of economic stability, with outstanding successes in the fields of maritime exploration and defence. The period also saw a huge expansion in trade, the creation of new industries, a rise in social mobility, urbanisation and the development of an extraordinary literary culture.

Elizabeth I & Her People tells the stories of those individuals whose achievements brought about these changes in the context of an emerging national identity, as well as giving a fascinating glimpse into their way of life through accessories and artefacts. The exhibition includes costumes, coins, personal accessories such as exquisite renaissance ruby, diamond and emerald rings, purses, and pomanders.

By displaying a selection of magnificent portraits of Elizabeth I, owned or displayed by different classes of Elizabethan society, the exhibition shows how she established, during a reign of nearly 50 years, an image of a strong and powerful female monarch. The creation of these portraits – with artful poses, costume and jewellery – has done much to reinforce the sense of her dominating authority within a complex period.

Whatever the challenges to her sovereignty, this is a period in which England emerged with greater economic power, in great part through increased trade built on growth in European and international exchanges, the expansion of the city of London, a nascent national and local political infrastructure, and with a more stable religious order, a flourishing literary culture, and much of this being driven by a burgeoning middle class. The exhibition also shows how it is a period in which appearance was made more self-conscious, with calls for the enforcement of sumptuary laws that attempted to determine what was appropriate to be worn by people of different stations.

Exhibits have been drawn together from private collections and public ones including Sherborne Castle, Hatfield House, the British Library, the V & A, the British Museum and the Museum of London.

Elizabeth I & Her People is curated by Dr Tarnya Cooper, the National Portrait Gallery’s Chief Curator and its Curator of Sixteenth Century Portraits, whose previous exhibitions at the Gallery include Searching for Shakespeare (2006). She is the author of A Guide to Tudor & Jacobean Portraits (2008) and Citizen Portrait – Portrait Painting and the Urban Elite of Tudor and Jacobean England and Wales, 1540–1620 (Yale University Press, 2012).

Dr Tarnya Cooper says: ‘We might all think we know what the Elizabethan period looked like. The remarkable portraits of Elizabeth I as a static bejewelled queen and her courtiers in their finery are familiar from history books. This exhibition, based on new research, provides an alternative narrative and allows us to come face-to-face with a cast of other Elizabethans including butchers, soldiers, businessmen and women as well as writers and artists. Their lives and achievements tell us something about the nature of Elizabethan society and the rise in social mobility. The exhibition therefore explores questions about status and identity and asks, whether the Elizabethan period might be understood as an early meritocracy?’

Historian and exhibition adviser Dr Ian Archer, Keble College, Oxford, says: ‘During the reign of Elizabeth the English economy was commercialising rapidly. There were winners and losers. The purchasing power of ordinary people's wages plummeted, bringing impoverishment for many, but there were considerable opportunities for those on the right side of the economic equation, those with land and the emergent professional and mercantile groups. One of the ways these people could express their new found status was through portraits’.

National Portrait Gallery
St Martin's Place
London WC2H 0HE United Kingdom
Ph. +44 (0)20 73060055
www.npg.org.uk

Opening hours
Daily from 10am to 6pm
Late Opening Thursday & Friday until 9pm

Admission
£12.50 Adult
£11.30 Concessions

Related images

  1. Elizabeth I and the Three Goddesses Attributed to Isaac Oliver, c.1590 © National Portrait Gallery, London
  2. A Fête at Bermondsey by Joris Hoefnagel, c.1569–70, Reproduced by permission of the Marquess of Salisbury, Hatfield House
  3. The Procession Portrait of Queen Elizabeth Unknown Anglo-Netherlandish artist, c.1600-03 ©Sherborne Castle, Dorset
  4. Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk (1538–72) by Hans Eworth, 1562, Private collection
  5. Queen Elizabeth I, The 'Ermine' Portrait Attributed to Nicholas Hilliard, 1585 Reproduced by permission of the Marquess of Salisbury, Hatfield House
  6. Margaret Audley, Duchess of Norfolk (1540–1564) by Hans Eworth, 1562. From the private collection of Lord Braybrooke, on display at Audley End House, Essex (English Heritage) © English Heritage