When the Hanovarians succeeded to the British throne in 1714 they did not inherit a comprehensive collection of portraits of English kings and queens of England. The only portraits of medieval monarchs then in the collection were six panels depicting Henry V, Henry VI, Edward IV and his queen, Elizabeth Woodville (RCIN 406785), Richard III and Elizabeth of York. Tudor monarchs were better represented but even here the legacy was disappointing. Queen Caroline, consort of George II, supplemented this meagre supply with a group of fifteen panels (of roughly the same dimensions), most if not all acquired from Charles Cornwallis, 1st Earl Cornwallis (1700–62), perhaps in 1721–2, when he was Groom of the Bedchamber. In this way she added some duplicates and some important new names – Henry IV, Henry VII and his mother Lady Margaret Beaufort (fig. vii.5), as well as the present two, of Edward III and Richard II. The Cornwallis purchase also included, from the Tudor period, Henry VIII and two of his wives, Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn, and Edward VI and Mary I. Queen Caroline hung the entire set in the Dressing Room of her private apartments at Kensington.

Queen Caroline probably wanted as many English kings as she could obtain, but she must have sought some more than others. Edward III was a model warrior king and the essential ancestor of any claimant to the throne during the Wars of the Roses. The reign of his son, Richard II, represented a moment of stillness before the anarchy of civil war. 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.

The set was created long after their sitters’ deaths by a journeyman painter and are based on images in Westminster Abbey, this head and shoulders portrait of Richard II (1367-1400) derives from the full-length portrait at Westminster Abbey.

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