Amy Robsart (painting)

Painting
Oil on canvas
282 x 189 cm (111 x 74 in)

Wikimedia Commons

Amy Robsart is a painting by the British artist William Frederick Yeames (1835–1918), exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1877, and at the Exposition Universelle in Paris the following year.[1]

The painting depicts Amy Robsart, the wife of Robert Dudley, lying dead at the foot of a flight of stairs. Dudley was a favourite of Queen Elizabeth I (1533–1603), and it was rumoured at the time that he had arranged for his servant, Anthony Forster, to kill Amy, leaving him free to marry the Queen. The scene shows Forster pretending to have discovered Amy’s body, having suffocated her and thrown her down the stairs, with his clearly horrified manservant looking on. Dudley and the Queen never married.[2]

The painting is now in the collection of the Tate, to which it was presented by the Trustees of the Chantrey Bequest in 1877.[2]

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Works cited

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