Studio of Sir Anthony Van Dyck

This portrait is derived from Van Dyck’s lost original of circa 1636.¹ Studio versions are found in the Fine Arts Gallery in San Diego,¹ and the Alte Pinakothek, Munich.² Born in 1609 as the youngest daughter of Henri IV of France and Marie de Medici, Henrietta Maria was proposed as a suitable candidate for a match with the future Charles I from an early age. Married by proxy in May 1625, she landed in England the following month and began her life as Queen of England at the age of sixteen. As a devout French Catholic in a self-consciously Protestant English court, the Queen’s first years in England were not happy ones, and the unprecedented union of a Catholic princess with the heir to a Protestant throne was greeted with considerable trepidation on both sides of the Channel. Her religious convictions, coupled with Lord Buckingham’s attempts to turn Charles against her made relations with her husband increasingly uncomfortable until Buckingham’s death and their subsequent reconciliation in 1628. The birth of the future Charles II followed soon after in May 1630. She subsequently became the mother of Mary (1631), James, Duke of York (1633), Elizabeth (1636), Henry, Duke of Gloucester (1640), and Henriette Anne, Duchess of Orleans (1644).

¹ O. Millar in Van Dyck: A Complete Catalogue of Paintings, S.J. Barnes, N. De Poorter, O. Millar and H. Vey (eds), New Haven and London 2004, p. 635, no. IV.A19, reproduced.

² https://collection.sdmart.org/objects-1/info/1025

³ https://www.sammlung.pinakothek.de/en/artwork/2mxqZXkL8b/