Frank Cadogan Cowper (1877-1958), The Blue Bird, 1918, Oil On Canvas, 88.4 X 71.1 Cm. In A Private Collection.-The

Frank Cadogan Cowper (1877-1958), The Blue Bird, 1918, oil on canvas, 88.4 x 71.1 cm. In a private collection. - The Blue Bird appeared at the Royal Academy in 1918, the last year of the Great War. Military images dominated the exhibition and the picture must have struck an incongruous note amid the portraits of generals, tributes to indomitable Tommies, romanticised accounts of ‘bringing up the guns’, and poignant war memorials. There seems to be no iconographical connection with Maurice Maeterlinck’s play The Blue Bird, although Cowper must have been aware of the phenomenally successful staging of this 'transcendental pantomime’ at the Haymarket Theatre, London, in 1909-11. The costumes and sets were by Frederick Cayley Robinson, who also illustrated the text when it was published by Methuen in 1911.

The picture does, however, undoubtedly relate to Madame d'Aulnoy’s fairy tale of the same name, first published in 1697. This tells of a beautiful young princess, Fiordelisa, who falls in love with a handsome prince. He returns her love, but her wicked step-mother, wanting him to marry her own ill-favoured daughter, Turritella, shuts her up in a tower and attempts to blacken her name with her suitor. When the prince, refusing to marry Turritella, is transformed into a Blue Bird by her fairy godmother, he flies to the tower and holds amorous tête-à-têtes with Fiordelisa, bringing her presents of jewels as tokens of his affection. Cowper shows the lovers enjoying one of these trysts, the princess holding a rope of pearls that the Blue Bird has evidently just given her. 

The Tudors vs. History, 23/?

“The letters show a young woman who, through a mixture of pride and naivety, completely misjudged her situation. This was not entirely her fault; her friends, rejoicing at Anne Boleyn’s removal, did not realise they had been used either. But used they were. Cromwell never intended that the old, conservative, Aragonese faction […] should triumph. Now that they had served their purpose, he intended to remove the conservatives. And it was easy to do this, by depicting them as disloyal subjects who were plotting to overturn religious change and restore Mary, the king’s illegitimate and disobedient daughter, to the succession.”

– The Myth of ‘Bloody Mary’, Linda Porter

“Will submit to him in all things next to God, humbly beseeching your Highness to consider that I am but a woman, and your child, who hath committed her soul only to God, and her body to be ordered in this world as it shall stand with your pleasure.“

– Princess Mary to [Henry VIII.] Hounsdon, 1 June.

“You will see I have followed your advice, and will do so in all things concerning my duty to the King, God and my conscience not offended; for I take you as one of my chief friends next his Grace and the Queen. I desire you, for Christ’s passion, to find means that I be not moved to any further entry in this matter than I have done; for I assure you I have done the utmost my conscience will suffer me, and I neither desire nor intend to do less than I have done. But if I be put to any more (I am plain with you as with my great friend) my said conscience will in no ways suffer me to consent thereunto. Except in this point, neither you nor any other shall be more desirous to have me obey the King than I shall be ready to do so. I had rather lose my life than displease him. I beg you to take this letter in good part. I would not have troubled you so much, but that the end of your letter caused me a little to fear I shall have more business hereafter. Hownsdon, 10 June.”

– 1108. Princess Mary to Cromwell.

Allegorical Portrait of a Woman (also known as Simonetta Vespucci) by Sandro Botticelli

Natalie Portman as Anne Boleyn in The Other Boleyn Girl (2008)

Thomas More, 1527, Hans Holbein the Younger

Medium: chalk,paper