Portrait of Prince Frederick, Duke of York | |
---|---|
Artist | Thomas Lawrence |
Year | 1816 |
Medium | Oil on canvas |
Dimensions | 274.9 cm× 179.1 cm(108.2 in× 70.5 in) |
Location | Royal Collection, Windsor Castle |
The Portrait of Prince Frederick, Duke of York, is a portrait painting of 1816 by the English artist Thomas Lawrence. [1] [2] It depicts Prince Frederick, Duke of York, the Commander in Chief of the British Army. A royal duke, he was the second son of George III and younger brother of the Prince Regent. From 1820 to his death in 1827 he was heir presumptive to the British throne. [3]
The Duke of York joined the army at an early age. He was made Commander in Chief in his early thirties. He held the post from 1795 to 1809 and again from 1811 to 1827. He was forced to resign the command in 1809 due to accusations made by his former lover Mary Anne Clarke, but returned to the position two years later. Today he is perhaps best known for his association with the nursery rhyme The Grand Old Duke of York which reputedly refers to his unsuccessful military command during the Flanders Campaign, twenty years before the portrait was painted.
Lawrence was the leading portrait painter of the Regency era. He shows the Duke in a full-length view wearing the uniform of a Field Marshal. He displays the "star of the Garter and the collars of the Garter and Bath, holding across his body the mantle of the Garter with his Marshal's baton in his left hand". [4] The work was exhibited at the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition in 1816, one of three portraits of the Duke that Lawrence displayed there between 1814 and 1822. [5] The portrait was commissioned by the Duke's elder brother the Prince Regent for four hundred guineas. Part of the Royal Collection, today it hangs in the Waterloo Chamber at Windsor Castle which commemorates those involved in the defeat of Napoleon. [4]
Sir Thomas Lawrence was an English portrait painter and the fourth president of the Royal Academy. A child prodigy, he was born in Bristol and began drawing in Devizes, where his father was an innkeeper at the Bear Hotel in the Market Square. At age ten, having moved to Bath, he was supporting his family with his pastel portraits. At 18, he went to London and soon established his reputation as a portrait painter in oils, receiving his first royal commission, a portrait of Queen Charlotte, in 1789. He stayed at the top of his profession until his death, aged 60, in 1830.
Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany was the second son of George III, King of the United Kingdom and Hanover, and his consort Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. A soldier by profession, from 1764 to 1803 he was Prince-Bishop of Osnabrück in the Holy Roman Empire. From the death of his father in 1820 until his own death in 1827, he was the heir presumptive to his elder brother, George IV, in both the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and the Kingdom of Hanover.
Thomas Phillips was a leading English portrait and subject painter. He painted many of the great men of the day including scientists, artists, writers, poets and explorers.
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St George's Chapel, formally titled The King's Free Chapel of the College of St George, Windsor Castle, at Windsor Castle in England is a castle chapel built in the late-medieval Perpendicular Gothic style. It is a Royal Peculiar, and the Chapel of the Order of the Garter. St George's Chapel was founded in the 14th century by King Edward III and extensively enlarged in the late 15th century. It is located in the Lower Ward of the castle.
The Allied sovereigns' visit to England occurred in June 1814 to celebrate the peace following the defeat of France and abdication of Napoleon Bonaparte in April 1814. The sovereigns and generals of the Coalition Allies – comprising Austria, Prussia, Russia, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and a number of German States – took part in a state visit and various peace celebrations in London before progressing to the Congress of Vienna later that year. It is also occasionally known as the Congress of London, although most diplomatic discussions were deferred until Vienna.
The Waterloo Chamber, dating from 1830 to 1831, is a large room in Windsor Castle dedicated to the military defeat of the French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte by British, Prussian, Russian, and Austrian forces under the command of the Duke of Wellington at the Battle of Waterloo.
Sebastian Gahagan was a sculptor of Irish descent active in London. His most notable works are the monument to Sir Thomas Picton in St Paul's Cathedral, and a statue of the Duke of Kent in Park Crescent, Portland Place. He was also employed by Joseph Nollekens, carrying out the carving of many of his major works.
Events from the year 1799 in Germany.
The Portrait of Marshal Blücher is an 1814 portrait painting by the English artist Thomas Lawrence of the Prussian Field Marshal Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher.
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