Katherine Parr?

[Vecchiolarry]

Hi,

She was portrayed by Deborah Kerr in the movie "Young Bess" and that ain't bad!!!

Larry

[Romanov_fan]

There is a lock of her hair at Sudeley Castle. It is a beautiful shade of red/gold...I guess what we would call dark strawberry blonde, a very pretty colour.

Is there a picture of her hair at the castle anywhere?

[Kimberly]

Here is a pic of another lock of her hair Imp. Just scroll down a bit (looks a bit redder than this in "real life" though)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-506839/Hair-King-Henrys-sixth-wife-hammer.html

[boleynfan]

Simply amazing!  It is hard to wrap my brain around the idea that this is really her hair.
I never thought of Katherine Parr as a blonde, probably because brunette Rosalie Crutchley portrayed her in The Six Wives of Henry VIII.

[Romanov_fan]

Well, all her portraits show her with brown hair ( likely a wig), so that's another reason why it's hard to picture her as blonde. It's interesting her hair was auctioned. Perhaps the fact that her hair was reddish blonde in reality and that's not usually an image we have of her illustrates that the portraits we have of Henry's wives no doubt don't always give us an exact impression of what they looked like. I believe Catharine of Aragon's hair was dark red gold (when she was younger) as illustrated in in the very early portrait of her wearing the black dress and headress.

[Mari]

With that color hair (strawberry) I bet she was much better looking than her Paintings. But I take it her personality wasn't a witty, flirty sort and more nurturing maybe!

[IrinaAlexandrovna]

I agree with Mari.....
I think she was quite pretty but in some portraits she looks not that much pretty........

[Romanov_fan]

With that color hair (strawberry) I bet she was much better looking than her Paintings. But I take it her personality wasn't a witty, flirty sort and more nurturing maybe!

Yes, she looks almost matronly in her portraits, not unattractive, but not really young either. I think she was much better looking than in her portraits too, she was young by today's standards when she died but middle aged by the standards of the 16th century. Does any hair of Henry's other wives survive? I'll look around.

[Eddie_uk]

Good question Imperial angel, I wonder. I'm sure Kimberly can help us here, she loves these sorts of questions.

[Romanov_fan]

I did some research online on whether hair of Henry's other wives exists and found no information, but maybe there's information out there.

[Kimberly]

There is a lock of hair from Mary Q o S at Chiddington Castle in Kent, I haven't seen it. At Sudeley, there is also a tooth belonging to Katherine Parr!!

Henry's sister, Mary-Rose had hair of a "beauteous golden colour" and a lock was cut from her head when her tomb was opened in the 18th century. It ended up in the collection of the Duchess of Portland and when that collection was broken up and sold off,it was sold to a gentleman (this was in 1848).
There is another lock of her hair preserved in a locket in the Moyses Hall Museum in Bury st Edmunds. It is possibly very slightly darker in colour than that of Katherine Parr's.
Last I heard there were plans afoot to extract DNA from this lock of hair with the aim to compare with DNA extracted from "THOSE BONES" kept in the urn at Westminster Abbey. Of course, permission has not been granted for access to "THOSE BONES".......yet.:-)

[ilyala]

that's odd cause mary rose also had dark hair in the painting depicting her and charles brandon together.

i wonder why they kept painting their hair darker than it was.

[Romanov_fan]

They could just have been wearing wigs, that was common back then. As I recall the standards of beauty did not lean towards darker hair then. In addition, some of these portraits could have been misattributed.

[Kimberly]

Here is a pic of Mary Rose's hair
http://www.eadt.co.uk/content/eadt/news/story.aspx?brand=EADOnline&category=News&tBrand=eadonline&tCategory=News&itemid=IPED11%20Mar%202007%2023%3A05%3A41%3A077

Well, Ilyala, Anne Boleyn was supposed to have at least very dark if not black hair, yet her most famous portrait shows it as being dark auburn with a hint of a paler, almost reddish streak. Mind you, its not quite contemporary so maybe a bit of artistic license was used :-)
I read somewhere that there were locks of Mary Rose's hair that were darker in shade but that has been attributed to the fact that they had been pickled to preserve them !!

[Romanov_fan]

Mary was defintely a blonde. Thanks for the pictures. As I recall, I've read in various bios that Anne Boleyn's beauty did not meet the standards of the day because it was too dark.