With King Charles III’s coronation right around the corner, I am hoping that we have a new portrait (or portraits) being announced. While photography has obviously taken the place of prominence in royal portraiture, I remain a dedicated admirer of traditionally painted portraits. There are countless gorgeous royal portraits in galleries and collections around the world from many different artists. However, there are a few artists whose careers largely revolved around painting for a royal court. In this new series on the blog, I’m going to be exploring the history of court painters and highlighting some of my favourites from across history.
What is a Court Painter?
A court painter is obviously… a painter. It was often an official office or title given to a painter, but I’ve included some unofficial court painters whose legacies line up with the office. In particular, court painters would have set contracts with a single royal court, or sometimes multiple courts. They would paint portraits of the sovereign and members of the royal family. They would also undertake paintings commissioned by the monarch; these could be of any subject matter. Aside from the French court where the First Painter of the King had to be French, court painters would come from anywhere across Europe. Sadly, this role is no longer utilised.
Sir Peter Lely’s portrait of Frances Stuart, held by the Royal Collection Trust
Court Painters
I will be covering several different artists throughout this series, from a variety of centuries, royal courts, and nationalities. As I explained above, this series includes painters who have officially held the office of court painter, as well as those artists who did not hold an official title but whose works and careers were largely centred around different royal courts. You can expect to see these artists and more throughout the series:
Sir Peter Lely
Franz Xaver Winterhalter
Joshua Reynolds
Titian
Laurits Regner Tuxen
Anthony van Dyck
Hans Holbein, the Younger
♠
This series will be launching in May after the Coronation! Each month, you will have a new artist to enjoy and hopefully learn more about them. And ideally, by then we will have a new portrait of King Charles III.
Want More Royal Portraits?
In the meantime, I have included three of my favourite exhibitions/ galleries for royal portraits. (No, unfortunately, I’ve not been able to visit the National Portrait Gallery in London yet- hopefully on my next trip after it reopens.)
Russia: Royalty and the Romanovs
This was a 2018-2019 exhibition at The Queen’s Gallery and included some of the Royal Collection Trust’s most stunning royal portraits. (Yes, there are multiple Winterhalters…)
The Queen’s House, Greenwich
If you want to see a gorgeous royal house in London, The Queen’s House is a must-see for the architecture alone. However, there are also several incredible royal portraits including the Armada Portrait (Elizabeth I). And if you are a Stuart fan, there are several Stuart portraits to enjoy!
King’s Apartments and Royal Portraits, Kensington Palace
Kensington Palace is managed by Historic Royal Palace but has portraits from several different collections on display, including the Royal Collection Trust and the National Portrait Gallery.
I hope you are looking forward to the history of court painters – please let me know if you have any in particular you would like to see!
Cheers,
The Historian
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Thought you might be interested in this take on Court Painter and in no way is meant to detract from your scholarly research.
The Court Painter satirical series has been running since 2014.
AHM’s meticulously constructed digital illustrations adopt the vantage point of the Court Painter—a satirical chronicler of local, national, and international politicos, players, journalists, and hangers-on. This persona revives the traditional, often adversarial relationship between the court artist and the court fool, turning a critical eye toward those who see themselves as cultural, political, and ruling elites. The result echoes the spirit of 18th- and 19th-century satirists and social critics as well as contemporary practitioners.
In addition to the illustrative imagery, accompanying texts often blend researched journalistic content with original commentary and the occasional satirical text assist from ChatGPT.
Court Painter, it must be noted, does not use AI applications or prompts for any images created for the posts. Images are created by a digital cut and paste method.
The Court Painter conceit lays bare a bemused contemporary obsession with political peccadilloes, poking fun at our collective public conscience.
Sincerely
Allan Harding MacKay Artist
Oh, this is fascinating- thank you for sharing! A lot of my research in university was on political cartoons, so this is right up my alley.