A man sits on a muscular horse, towering above a servant who passes him a helmet to complete his suit of armour. A Latin inscription on the tablet hanging from a tree identifies him as ‘King of Great Britain’ – this is Charles I, surveying his kingdom. Anthony van Dyck painted several portraits of Charles, but at over 3.5 metres high and nearly 3 metres wide, this is the largest.
Other details communicate the King’s status: the gold chain around his neck shows that he’s a member of an elite society called the Order of the Garter, while the baton of command he holds signals his senior military rank. In the other hand he grasps the reins to his powerful horse – a symbol of the control he has over his state, something he was to lose only a few years later during the British Civil Wars. In January 1649, he was put on trial for treason, and executed.
Hampton Court, Middlesex – Denmark/Somerset House, London
The reverse of the present painting is branded with the cipher of King Charles I devised by the surveyor of the king’s collections, Abraham van der Doort (1565/70–1640), to denote royal ownership, but it was not in the part of the royal collection catalogued by him from 1637. Van der Doort never completed his ambitious undertaking as he had managed to cover only the palace of Whitehall in Westminster and Nonesuch Palace in Surrey before either his suicide in 1640 or earlier circumstances outside his control saw the end of the project. But he knew of NG1172, because he described a work he catalogued in the Chair Room in Whitehall as Van Dyck’s modello for it: ‘... the King, upon a Dunn horse one following his Matie carrying his head peece ... Done by Sr Anthony Vandike being the first moddell of ye king in greate on horseback ...’, which was ‘at this time in the Princes Gallory at Hampton Court’. The Prince’s Gallery is not identified as such in published plans of Hampton Court, but it is not unlikely to be what earlier was called the King’s Long Gallery, leading to a room known as ‘Paradise’ created by Henry VIII (1491–1547), on the first floor of the palace on the eastern side of the Green Cloister Court. By the phrase ‘at this time’, van der Doort seems to suggest that the placement of the painting had not been fixed. Maybe a plan to hang it there was abandoned, and it was moved to Denmark House (soon to revert to its erstwhile appellation of Somerset House), the palace on the Strand, London, occupied by Charles’s consort Henrietta Maria (1609–1669), for Somerset House was given as its place of origin in the records (1649–51) of the Trustees for the sale of the late king’s goods. It was displayed in the Great Gallery built for James I’s consort Anne of Denmark (1574–1619) at the eastern, riverside end of the building – described as ‘one of the most magnificent rooms in London’ – in which over one hundred paintings were displayed, including Titian’s Alfonso D’Avalos addressing his Troops (Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado). The transport of the Van Dyck from Hampton Court to Somerset House is not documented; its display there should be seen as part of the constant improvements to the interior decoration of the palace undertaken in the 1630s and early 1640s on behalf of the queen.
The parliamentary act to enable the sale of royal possessions was passed some six months after the execution of the king on 30 January 1649; the fitting up of the Great Hall at Somerset House as the sale venue was authorised some weeks later. Paintings from the adjacent Great Gallery were available from October of that year, but it was not until 21 June of the following year that the present painting was recorded as having been sold to Sir Balthazar Gerbier (1592–1663) at the official valuation of £200; on the same day, he acquired for £150 Titian’s full-length portrait, Emperor Charles V with a Dog (Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado), which had come from St James’s Palace, Westminster. These were by far the most substantial sums paid for the few purchases Gerbier made from the royal possessions. They were probably not for his own account, as in the very varied career of this enigmatic figure in the diplomatic and cultural worlds of Caroline and Commonwealth England, and of his native Republic of the United Provinces which reached a highpoint about 1640, there is no suggestion of his being an important collector of paintings. Most likely he was acting with and/or for the Spanish ambassador Alonso de Cárdenas (about 1592–1666, in post 1638–55), who in the last years of his embassy made a large number of acquisitions financed by the first minister of King Philip IV (1605–1665) of Spain, using agents to conceal his identity. Thus on 10 February 1651, he reported that he had bought the Titian portrait of Charles V and sent it to the minister. A transaction for the Equestrian Portrait seems to have stalled, for in a memorandum of 25 May 1654 which included an account for August 1651, Cárdenas listed it as still available. (Also to fail was the onward sale, by another, unconnected, agent, of Van Dyck’s 1633 equestrian portrait of Charles I (Royal Collection Trust) after its purchase in 1652). What then happened to NG1172 remains unknown; but that it was soon exported seems very probable, for, at all events, it was out of the reach of Charles II’s officers as they sought to recover his father’s possessions after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660.
Antwerp – Brussels – Munich
It was not until almost half a century after the purchase of the painting by Gerbier in London that its whereabouts are known: its then owner was a wealthy Antwerp citizen Gijsbert (or Gisberto) van Colen (1636–1703), a member of a long-standing dynasty of merchants and the head of the largest trading enterprise in the southern Netherlands. The firm Van Colen operated mainly in Spain and its territories, and dealt in luxury goods and books. It also traded in arms and occasionally sold tapestries and paintings. The Equestrian Portrait of Charles I was one of the 101 paintings sold in Antwerp by van Colen to Maximilian II Emanuel (1662–1726), governor of the Spanish Netherlands and elector of Bavaria, for a total of 90,000 Brabantine guilders on 17 September 1698. While seven of the eleven portraits by Van Dyck in this sale can be traced back to noted Antwerp collectors, the previous owner of the present painting, which was priced at 4,000 speciesthaler, is not known. Maybe it had been acquired by van Colen’s widowed mother Suzanne, née Hureau (1611–1677), who ran the business after her husband’s death in 1647. The circumstances behind this extraordinary sale remain mysterious.
Maximilian II Emanuel, head of the Bavarian branch of the House of Wittelsbach, elector of Bavaria from 1679 to 1704 and governor of the Spanish Netherlands from 1692 to 1700 and 1702 to 1706, was a flamboyant figure, a great collector and important patron of the arts. He owned the Equestrian Portrait only for some eight years due to his defeats as an ally of Louis XIV of France (1638–1715) at the battles of Blenheim (Höchstädt-Blindheim) in southern Germany in 1704 and of Ramillies in the southern Netherlands in 1706 by the army of the Grand Alliance led by John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough (1650–1722). While governor of the Spanish Netherlands, Max Emanuel presided over a stylish court, decorating his Brussels residence, the palace of Coudenberg, with furnishings and works of art This was also when he acquired most of his paintings, concentrating on the Flemish seventeenth century and in particular works by Van Dyck. His most important Van Dyck, the Equestrian Portrait of Charles I, was most likely displayed in the palace of Coudenberg. The painting collection probably moved with the court to the Wittelsbach Bavarian capital, Munich in 1701 after Max Emanuel fled Brussels, bringing to an end his first term as governor. It is not known where the Equestrian Portrait was then displayed. After the battle of Blenheim and the defeated elector’s flight from Bavaria, Munich was placed briefly under the regency of his wife Theresa Kunegunda (1676–1730) (daughter of King Johann III Sobieski of Poland), but after her departure in early 1705 and his being placed under the ban of the empire (on 29 April 1706), the city was occupied by imperial troops and the Van Dyck became the possession of Emperor Joseph I (1678–1711).
Amidst high matters of state diplomacy and the conduct of armies, Marlborough found time after the victory at Ramillies in May 1706 to dwell on the palace that was to be built on land at Woodstock, Oxfordshire, awarded to him by Queen Anne (1665–1714) at the wish of Parliament. Construction at public expense had begun in 1705 of what was to be Blenheim Palace, and the duke – already made a prince of the empire – approached the emperor via an intermediary in September for a gift of paintings, in particular the Van Dyck, with which to decorate it. How he knew of the portrait is not recorded; but as a work by a much admired artist, it would have appealed to him – devoted as he was to the house of Stuart – by its commemoration on a grand scale the grandfather of his patron, the then queen. Charles’s depiction in the role of a military commander would also have struck a chord with a successful general.
The emperor acceded to his request and authorised the painting’s release in a letter to the Reichshofratpresident Count Oettingen-Wallerstein: ‘Dear Count von Ötting the Duke of Marlborugh [sic] has made it known that he would be glad if he would receive some paintings from the Munich Kunstkammer among which he particularly requests King Charles of England’s portrait on horseback made by the painter Wondeick.’ An enthusiastic Marlborough informed his wife, Sarah (1660–1744), in a letter of 8 November 1706: ‘I am so fond of some pictures I shall bring with me, that I could wish you had a place for them till the Gallery at Woodstock be finished; for it is certain there are not in England so fine pictures as some of these, particularly King Charles on horseback, done by Vandyke. It was the Elector of Bavaria’s, and given to the Emperor, and I hope it is by this time in Holland.’ Marlborough glossed over the facts when describing the painting as having been a gift to the emperor; indeed Maximilian II Emanuel was to mourn its loss: ‘By the way, I am losing all taste and joy in paintings when I think about how my beautiful collection in Munich has been looted. Without a doubt, you already know that the splendid picture by Van Dyck of the King of England on horseback was given by the Emperor to the Duke of Marlborough as a present. In Brussels Trevisans [Trevisanus was Max Emanuel’s court musician] had seen with his own eyes how it was rolled up to be sent to England, where it might be now already.’
London – Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire – London
The Duke of Marlborough may well have seen the Van Dyck recently installed in Blenheim Palace (which was still under construction at the time of his death in 1722), as he stayed at the palace in 1719 and again in 1720–1. Earlier, there had been nowhere to place it on its arrival in England – Marlborough House, on Pall Mall, was not completed until 1711 – so a loan to Lord Halifax saw it displayed in his house in Jermyn Street, London, where it was recorded in 1708. Subsequently, it was presumably displayed at Marlborough House, until it could be moved to Blenheim Palace, where it was to be placed to provide a sensational view, at the end of the Picture Gallery, a magnificent 53 metres in length and completed in 1728. Some thirty years later, it was returned to London because the Picture Gallery had been converted in 1749 to house the Sunderland Library inherited by Charles Spencer, 3rd Duke of Marlborough (1706–1758). After the death of his successor and the expiry of the Marlborough House lease in 1817, it was again on show at Blenheim following its exhibition at the British Institution; it remained there until its sale by the 8th Duke, Charles Spencer-Churchill (1844–1892), to the National Gallery.
Following Raphael’s Ansidei Madonna (NG1171), the Equestrian Portrait of Charles I was the second choice of the National Gallery’s Trustees from the list of paintings offered for sale in 1884. After long negotiations and much public debate, the Van Dyck was acquired for £17,500 in the following year.
Text extracted from the ‘Provenance’ section of the catalogue entry in ‘National Gallery Catalogues: Online Entries’, London 2024; for further information, see the full catalogue entry.
J. Smith, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch, Flemish, and French Painters: In Which is Included a Short Biographical Notice of the Artists, with a Copious Description of Their Principal Pictures […], vol. 2, London 1830
C. Baker and T. Henry, The National Gallery: Complete Illustrated Catalogue, London 2001
The reproduction frame for this large-scale equestrian portrait was made at the Gallery in 2020 in the style of seventeenth-century Flemish frames. It is crafted from ebonised oak with partial gilding. The outer moulding features a reverse-bevelled back edge and a narrow fillet at the top, stepping down to an intricate moulding, accented with gilded fillets. A frieze leads to a narrow gilded sight edge consisting of an edge roll, a cavetto and a terminating edge roll.
This frame is modelled after existing frames from a series of three large works by Hendrick Goltzius dated 1611–13: Minerva, Mercury and Hercules (Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem). However, these period frames are not original to the paintings.
If you know more about this painting or have spotted an error, please contact us. Please note that exhibition histories are listed from 2009 onwards. Bibliographies may not be complete; more comprehensive information is available in the National Gallery Library.
