Following the news that a Bridport artist had commissioned three Tudor portraits; we had to go and see them for ourselves.

We visited Athelhampton House near Dorchester, where the paintings of Henry VIII, Elizabeth I and Chidiock Tichborne are proudly hung.

The artist responsible, Elizabeth Sporne, said: "About a year ago, the new owner of Athelhampton, Giles Keating, contacted me out of the blue via my website asking if I'd be interested in creating several Tudor-style portraits for an installation he had in mind - he was looking for someone local for the job.

"Even though I hadn't done anything quite like it before, I'd studied the era and I knew it was a golden opportunity, so no way was I going to pass it up.

"Over the next few months, I did a lot of fascinating research and then Giles and I, along with his estate manager, Owen, settled on references and sourced the materials to approximate - as near as was practical - the methods used back then.

"The three paintings took me until just before the second lockdown to complete and by the final one, Henry, well I became quite fond of him and really missed the big beast once he was gone from the studio.

"It was a thrill to finally see them all hung at Athelhampton, I'd been privileged to paint them and they looked very much at home."

The original idea for the portraits was for them to be in the cellar - which visitors could access through a secret passage - and highlighted during a Tudor 'ghost' video.

Mr Keating said: "We needed the portraits to go into the display in the cellar to complement the video, we obviously wanted a local artist to do it.

"I know some people in Bridport so I asked some of them and Liz's name sprang out at is. I think she just embraced the brief amazingly.

"I think an artist paints a picture and then you frame it, but I said to her, 'I have acquired these beautiful, antique frames, do you mind painting pictures that will fit in them?' She embraced the idea to make it authentically Tudor, they would be painted on oak and the oak was sourced by the joiner who has his premises on the Athelhampton site.

"The colours, when you look at them, you may think they are a bit bright, you think of old pictures as being quite soft, but actually they are as they would have been when they were done and then tends to fade.

"She did them all and they all look wonderful, we love them so much and we thought, 'shall we put them in the cellar where no one can see them until we get the video going and you only see them for 20 seconds each."

In the end Mr Keating decided to show them off and hang them on the walls of the main house and will look into projecting images of the portraits in the cellar.

"Liz did a lot of research and I think the results are absolutely fabulous," added Mr Keating. "I was amazed when I saw them."

Owen said: "The reaction has been very positive, particularly with Henry because although the inspiration is a previous portrait of him, to see that portrait you would have to go to Madrid - it's almost like welcoming him home.

"I think it's great we have these striking portraits rather than dark and dingy pieces which isn't really reflective of the time."

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