A wash drawing showing an elevation of a classical building with a colonnade and  two pavilion wings. With a single-line ink border.
Inscribed lower centre, over Prince of Wales feathers: G.P.W. 1760

This drawing was the result of the lessons which Joshua Kirby gave to the King in the art of perspectival drawing. That skill was an important accompaniment to the young King’s architectural tuition with William Chambers: while Chambers taught the elements of architecture - and in particular the classical orders - Kirby taught how to portray three-dimensional forms on a flat, two-dimensional surface. The precise content of Kirby’s lessons is not known, but they are likely to have included much of the information contained in his various published texts.

An inscription on the backing paper, evidently in Kirby’s hand, indicates that the drawing was made by the King for inclusion in Kirby’s book on perspective. Plate LXIV of Kirby’s Perspective of Architecture, published in 1761, was indeed a very precise reproduction of this design. In the accompanying text Kirby explained that ‘the Design was made, and compleated for me, so as to come within the compass of the plate: and I hope I may take the liberty of saying, that This, and the last finished Print in the book [also evidently drawn by the King - but probably to Chambers’s design], are esteemed by me as the most valuable parts of it’.

At an unknown date this drawing was added to others by the King that had been placed by Queen Charlotte in a red morocco portfolio. The portfolio was kept in the Queen’s Library at Frogmore.

Kirby’s plate was copied in an engraving, allegedly designed by John Turner, published on 8 December 1761, with the following title: A View of Their Majesties Intended Palace at Richmond. Although the façade has general similarities with early schemes for Richmond Palace - and indeed with Richmond Lodge and with the end façades of Kent’s model for a new Richmond Palace - it seems inherently unlikely that this drawing is a design rather than an exercise in perspective drawing, the subject of Kirby’s publication.

Inscribed and dated G.P.W. 1760, with feathers below. Inscribed in pen on the backing paper This Drawing was Designed & Executed for my Book on Perspective by His Majesty King George III

Catalogue entry adapted from George III & Queen Charlotte: Patronage, Collecting and Court Taste, London, 2004