LONDON.- Six Tudor queens – Katherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Katherine Howard and Katherine Parr - travelled across London today, convening at the National Portrait Gallery to visit the summer blockbuster exhibition, Six Lives: The Stories of Henry VIII’s Queens.

Members of the public encountered the characters at Waterloo Station, before the queens made their way to the Gallery to surprise Tudor fans and visitors to the exhibition.

This morning (Thursday 18 July), travelers passing through Waterloo Station witnessed an unexpected sight – six Tudor women united to celebrate the blockbuster exhibition, Six Lives: The Stories of Henry VIII’s Queens. The exhibition, which opened at the National Portrait Gallery on Thursday 20 June, chronicles the representation of Katherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Katherine Howard and Katherine Parr throughout history and in popular culture.

Staged by the National Portrait Gallery, the intervention saw actors, dressed in distinctive Tudor costumes, bring their characters to life by posing for photographs and encouraging passersby to stop, double-take and think more about the individualities of each queen. The queens then made their way from Waterloo to the National Portrait Gallery, reuniting with the iconic sixteenth-century portraits that made them all stars in their lifetimes, before surprising Tudor fans and those visiting the exhibition.

“The six women who married Henry VIII were protagonists in an almost implausible melodrama,” said Dr. Charlotte Bolland, Senior Curator of Research and 16th Century Collections at the National Portrait Gallery, and curator of the Six Lives exhibition. “Often reduced to the rhyme ‘Divorced, Beheaded, Died / Divorced, Beheaded, Survived,’ this exhibition seeks to restore the queens’ individuality and agency in historic and contemporary storytelling, bringing them out of Henry’s shadow and their homogenous grouping.”

“The portraits of Henry VIII’s queens are some of the most loved in the Gallery’s Collection,” said Denise Vogelsang, Director of Audiences at the National Portrait Gallery. “We instantly recognise Anne Boleyn from her pearl-drop ‘B’ necklace, and have heard the infamous story of Henry’s reaction to Anne of Cleves’ portrait, painted by Hans Holbein the Younger. These images have helped turn these women into enduring icons, and by meeting them ‘in person,’ we hope to give audiences the opportunity to experience their fascinating stories in a new way.”