Charles I, dressed in armour with a lace collar, blue sash and black hat, on a white horse faces the viewer, on a wooded road. A mounted nobleman and officer accompany him; more mounted and foot soldiers and standard bearer behind; blue sky beyond.

On August 22nd, 1642, Charles I raised the Royal Standard in Nottingham; he had spent the previous months trying to raise an army in the north, without much success. He had rejected parliament's nineteen proposals on the future government of the country, framed, he said by "raisers of sedition and enemies of my sovereign power." He chose Nottingham to do this, rather than Warrington, as it was reachable from the Humber estuary by the river Trent, where he hoped support would arrive from the Netherlands. However, it did not augur well for the King; accounts recall that the weather was wet and gloomy, and that later that week the standard blew down.

This late work by the military artist Richard Caton Woodville was acquired by King George V in 1925. On 10 May that year Woodville wrote: 'I have just completed a small Cabinet picture, very highly finished in the style of four pictures I painted now in His Majesty's possession. I would like the King to grant me the very great honor [sic] to see this picture as it may interest him. … Although only a small panel … it has compressed in it the work of a large picture.' (see RCINs 402384-87). The painting was duly sent to Buckingham Palace for inspection and was bought for 125 guineas. He wrote that it would be an honour if the King should buy it: 'It is a picture painted con amore & I took a long time over it.'

The subject rarely appears in paintings. Nineteenth century examples include Henry Dawson's 'Nottingham Castle (Charles I Raising his Standard, 24 August 1642)', 1847 (Nottingham Castle Museum) and the fresco in the Peers Corridor in the Palace of Westminster by Charles West Cope, c. 1861.