“Henry VIII” from Love Through the Ages for The Tavern Club (fragment)

Edgar Miller
1934
Oil on board
L 2.1, W 1.7 m

This panel of the 1934 mural, Love Through the Ages, that Miller painted for the Tavern Club’s main dining room, is one of its cheekier vignettes. Depicting Henry VIII with a coterie of four of his wives, is filled with layers of extemporaneous flourishes and details, mostly and appropriately deriving from Medieval European designs. Miller, by this time in his career, was extraordinarily fluent in pattern development, and added plenty of small, eye-catching motifs to ensure that viewers returned to look at the piece again and again.

While the depiction of the English king is intended as a far-fetched caricature, Miller portrays the characters with significant symbols that nod towards the theme of the entire mural: the often disastrous side of tempestuous desires. A part of the King’s coat of arms, the Order of the Golden Fleece, dangles from his cape clasp. King Henry is shown with a cartoonishly large codpiece, while tickling the chin of Catherine Howard, Henry’s fifth wife, who was beheaded after little more than a year of marriage to the king.