Colonel Blood Stealing the Crown Jewels

Henry Perronet Briggs's Colonel Blood Stealing the Crown Jewels of 1824 illustrates one of the most audacious episodes in British criminal history: the attempt by Thomas Blood in 1671 to steal the Crown Jewels from the Tower of London, which nearly succeeded and ended with Charles II pardoning and even rewarding the perpetrator — a royal response so inexplicable that it has fueled conspiracy theories ever since. Briggs painted the subject for the Royal Academy, where historical genre subjects with strong narrative and dramatic action were favored by the exhibiting public. The episode offered everything a Romantic genre-history painter could want: disguise, violence, suspense, and the peculiar historical irony of royal clemency toward a thief. The Royal Academy of Arts holds the painting as a document of early Victorian historical genre painting.

Briggs constructs the scene around the drama of the theft attempt, with Blood and his confederates caught in the act. The Tower interior provides a dramatically shadowed setting, and the handling of candlelight or torch illumination creates the chiaroscuro effect appropriate to a midnight conspiracy. Individual figures are rendered with the narrative expressiveness expected of historical genre.