Portrait of Queen Henrietta Maria (1609-1669) C.1650; Attributed to Henry Stone (1616-1653), Manor House Provenance

This is an item with an interesting provenance from one of England’s finest stately homes with a long and intriguing history. This work formed part of a collection of family pictures and heirlooms of the Brocket Baronets, family seat Brocket Hall. The portrait used to hang in Brocket Hall's library - see photos.

This elegant portrait of the Queen portrays her serenely composed, standing half-length by her crown which is resting on a draped curtain, and her right hand caressing a rose on a table, an emblem of the pleasures of pain and love, beauty, and mortality. It is a majestic image, one that aptly illustrates the subject’s royalty and symbolically represents her desirable attributes of modesty and fertility. Ultimately the artist has created an image which presents the Queen as she would have wished to be perceived. The pose and the arrangement are simple yet the composition is one of the most subtlety beautiful, tenderly graceful, and exquisite.

Our painting is a contemporary version, probably painted circa 1650. It derives from a painting by Van Dyke of the Queen which is thought to be the first single portrait of her painted on his arrival in England in 1632. It is one of Antony Van Dyke’s most important and beautiful images of the Queen. A warrant dated 8 Aug 1632 for payments to him by the Crown included £20 for a portrait of “our royall consort”. The portrait was the one that King Charles I liked best for he had it hung in his bedchamber at Whitehall. Many contemporary versions were painted, ours is unique in that the crown is positioned in the right hand margin, on luxurious golden drapery (inspired directly from Van Dyke’s portrait of the Queen with Jeffrey Hudson painted 1633, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC).

Van Dyke invented this type of “careless romantic” clothing for his female sitters in England; the style was popular in portraits of court ladies. The silk contains hardly visible decorative cuts (pinks) on the fabric. Throughout the 1630s there was no real change to this iconic image. Had Van Dyke left but this one image of the Queen she would live for us the embodiment of grace, happiness, and queenly dignity.

A feature of this portrait is its exquisite 17th century carved and gilded auricular frame. The design, having originated in Italy, was a popular style particularly for Van Dyke’s paintings and frame makers working in London embraced this fashion with enthusiasm, using it for pictures from the 1630s to the 1680s. Examples can be found in Ham House, Richmond, and in the National Portrait Gallery, London. This frame, containing an inscription of the sitter and artist, is carved by hand and retains the original gilding; they are very sought after objects by museums and collectors and in this size, do not appear often for sale.

Henry Stone (1616-1653) was an English painter and an excellent copyist of the works of Van Dyck. He was the eldest son of notable sculptor and architect Nicholas Stone (1586/7-1647). Henry went to Holland, where he was apprenticed to his uncle, the painter Thomas de Keyser. He later went on a tour of the continent with his brother Nicholas Jr. visiting France, and Italy to study art, and returned circa 1642. After his father's death he and his youngest brother John carried on their father's business of masonry and statuary in London Stone was, however, chiefly known as a portrait painter, and was an excellent copyist of the works of Van Dyck and the Italian Masters (and his apprentice, Henry Paert, was also a good copyist and exerted this on most of the historic pieces of the royal collection). He also published a short work on painting, called "The Third Part of the Art of Painting". Several distinctive portraits painted by him survive. He died and was buried in London.

Provenance: Brocket Hall, the ancient seat of the Brocket Baronets, and thence by descent to Charles Ronald George Nall-Cain, 3rd

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