Anne Boleyn

Excerpt from the historical monologue "400 Years of English History" presented by artist/historian George S. Stuart as part of an exhibit of his Historical Figures at the Ventura County Museum of Art and History in Ventura California. Visit the Gallery of Historical Figures online at http://www.galleryhistoricalfigures.com.

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• Boleyn
• AnneBoleyn
• history
• Englishhistory
• England
• Tudor
• Queen
• mistress
• biography

[wubawubas]

I always hear that Anne had black hair, but I had to do some research for a project and some sources said that it wasnt actually black, but a very dark tone of red, which was considered then as dark...? im confused, does anyone know?

[mharrsch]

Mr. Stuart tells me:

The portrait in the National Gallery shows a hint of reddish brown but just a hint .

The painting was copied by another anonymous artist who gave a brick red to the hair, but was a very poor likeness to the original anonymous painting.

Nora Lofts, Jasper Ridley, Neville Williams,

Elizabeth Jenkins, Carolly Erickson all apparently concur that it was black!

G. S. Stuart

[tigranvartanovitch]

@morganspice That's right. It is quite a common English name, but these days it is spelled Bullen or Bullin. In those days you could change o into oo by adding an e. So Bole is pronounced Bool. Pole is Pool. Bone is Boon, Coke is Cook, Broke is Brook etc.

[Purkette]

@SilverDrama I think it was more likely frenchified into 'Bol eyn'. Short first syllable, and then 'laine'.

[Purkette]

@mharrsch Who's to know? I think that it was very dark brown, almost black, with dark or hidden, red highlights.

[livipotter]

i think he did a fine summary on anne boleyn, although he did forget that anne had two miscarriges, and henry at first was not mad at anne, in words for elizabeth, more like disappointment, in which he said, "if we can have a healthly girl, we can have a healthly boy." he also did noty say at how anne got so desprete, that she may have purposely put Madge Shelton into the kings sights to play mistress, while anne was pregant, and so that jane was out of henry's head. which didnt end up working.

[lotixi]

poor anne...

[morganspice]

Sorry, some strange editing, I had to cut down my characters. Basically one didn't have a number of pronunciations for one's name. But varying the spelling was quite common, Mary Stuart did that and sometimes people used one name at home and one on th continent.  Her last letter was signed 'Bulen.'

[morganspice]

True, there may have been variety because of whether one was trying to ally with the French. She herself may have anglicized it Anglicized, after she was criticized durring her reign for being too French. She used it to sign one of her last letters. Some appeal of Jane Seymore was that she was a plain English girl not one of those Francophiles.  But usually there is more variety with spelling pronunciation more consistent. Before everything was printed, spelling was more of a style or art.

[GhostDragon10]

Aye, well said, since everything was quite French-ified since it was in the style, but for the most part, he is right in saying the Anglicanized 'Bullen', but they're both correct in their own ways. :)