It’s been a while.
This one has been bothersome for some time. The idea that King Henry was gorging on a turkey leg in history books, in a famous painting. We all remember it, right?
This is how we remembered it.. And it never existed:
Doesn’t this just look.. wrong .. without a turkey leg?
From CNN:
According to Busiakiewicz, Ralph Sheldon commissioned the pictures – which were mostly of kings, queens and “significant contemporary international figures” – to hang in his home, Weston House in Warwickshire. The reason they had arched tops was because they “were once incorporated into an architectural frieze of the Long Gallery at Weston,” Busiakiewicz said.
In a press release sent to CNN, Busiakiewicz said the arched top was a “special feature of the Sheldon set,” while the painting’s frame was “identical to other surviving examples.”
The painting also showed the king holding a sword and wearing a feathered hat – just as he appeared in an engraving of the Long Hall made by antiquarian Henry Shaw in 1839.
The series of portraits was later dispersed at auction and “the majority remain untraced to this day,” according to Busiakiewicz.
After making his theory public, Busiakiewicz visited Warwick’s Shire Hall together with local historian Aaron Manning to see the painting close up. “The portrait is large, and completely in-line with the other Sheldon portraits,” Busiakiewicz wrote in a later blog post, on July 22.
In a telephone call with CNN, Busiakiewicz revealed that this was not the first discovery he had made thanks to social media. In 2018, he stumbled across a picture a friend had taken at a wedding and posted on Instagram. It featured a portrait that he identified as the work of 17th-century female artist Joan Carlile.
While this is NOT it, we just feel we will find this painting one day and prove it existed. Either in this timeline or another.
For inspiration that we are not alone in believing this existed, let us go back to 1979 when the Baltimore EVENING SUN showcased a King Henry eating a turkey leg.. for the record.