West’s arrival in England from Italy in 1763 occurred at a time when artists were seeking to create a distinguished national school of history painting. George III was eager to support such a goal and was also a keen supporter of the proposal to found a national academy for the teaching and display of arts: his patronage of West and the foundation of the Royal Academy in 1768 were closely intertwined. At the King’s instruction, ‘The Departure of Regulus’ (OM 1152, 405614) was shown at the first Royal Academy exhibition in 1769; he succeeded Sir Joshua Reynolds as President of the Royal Academy in 1792. West painted around sixty pictures for George III between 1768 and 1801. From 1772 he was described in Royal Academy catalogues as ‘Historical Painter to the King’ and from 1780 he received an annual stipend from the King of £100. In the 1780s he gave drawing lessons to the Princesses and in 1791 he succeeded Richard Dalton as Surveyor of the King’s Pictures. In the Audience Chamber at Windsor Castle, which was filled with West paintings (OM 1151, 406165, OM 1158-64, 404925-7 and 407521-3) and is recorded in Charles Wild’s watercolour (922109), there was a throne into which a double portrait of the King and Queen was incorporated, looking down on the real thing seated below in what Horace Walpole called ' an odd kind of tautology'. This is that double portrait, which is dated 1789, the same date as the other West scenes (connected with the founding of the Order of the Garter). The King wears a powdered wig and the robes of the order of the Garter. The Queen has powdered hair and is dressed in white with an elaborate hair ornament.