This portrait of King Edward III, in which he wears a crown and an ermine robe, was painted several centuries after his reign (1327-77). The unknown, sixteenth-century journeyman painter responsible for the portrait seems to have based the depiction of Edward on his tomb effigy in Westminster Abbey, created soon after the king’s death.

When the Hanoverians succeeded to the British throne with the coronation of George I in 1714, they did not inherit a comprehensive collection of portraits of kings and queens of England. Caroline of Ansbach, Queen consort of King George II from 1727, sought to remedy this. She acquired fifteen panels, all of similar dimensions, from Charles Cornwallis, 1st Earl Cornwallis (1700–62), probably when he was Groom of the Bedchamber in 1721-22. With this acquisition, she added some important names to the collection of royal portraits, including Henry IV, Henry VII, Richard II and, of course, Edward III.

Queen Caroline hung the entire set of portraits in the Dressing Room of her private apartments at Kensington Palace. She probably wanted to represent as many English monarchs as possible, but Edward III may have seemed a particularly attractive figure to include: he has gone down in history as a model warrior king and was considered the essential ancestor of any claimant to the throne during the Wars of the Roses (1455-85). Queen Caroline may have seen a parallel between the Wars of the Roses and the ongoing dynastic struggle between the houses of Hanover and Stuart.

Text adapted from The First Georgians: Art and Monarchy 1714-1760, London, 2014.