Old Stone

The enormous painting of King Charles I on horseback by Anthony van Dyck dominates the  Dining Room at Highclere. This is not a huge, spacious, well lit gallery where you can walk towards a painting and then perhaps sit on the standard wooden benches placed in the middle of the room to give yourself more time to look before moving on to admire the next portrait.

Instead, whether you see it whilst watching Downton Abbey or in person here at Highclere, this room is what it says it is – a place in which guests sit and eat, pause and chat. As such the painting is, effectively, a backdrop, albeit an extraordinary one which can be slowly observed again and again. It is a remarkable piece of art.

Some years ago a very large painting of Charles I’s wife Queen Henrietta Maria was offered for sale. It was not by van Dyck but by  “Old Stone”.  Geordie and I both thought it would be most appropriate to bid for it and Queen Henrietta Maria duly arrived at Highclere. It was a project to decide where to hang it  – in fact to work out where there was a big enough space. The current frame is clearly not the original one, it is too light and somehow too thin but for the time being it is fine.

Henrietta Maria was the daughter of  King Henry IV of France, born in the Palais de Louvre in 1609 and therefore a Roman Catholic. As such she could not be crowned in an English church and had no coronation but King Charles declared she would be called Queen Mary.

After an initially difficult time in her marriage, she and Charles formed a close and devoted partnership but she never fully assimilated into English society and never spoke or wrote English very fluently.

Queen Henrietta Maria had a strong interest in the arts – painting, sculpture and theatre and was particularly known for her patronage of the Italian painter Orazio Gentileschi who created the painted ceilings at Greenwich. She also retained Inigo Jones as her surveyor of works. However, it was the highly respected portrait painter Anthony van Dyck who painted her husband and family many times. As a result Van Dyck garnered many admirers and many who tried to copy him.

Our newly acquired painting of the Queen is by an English painter and Van Dyck copyist, Henry Stone (1616 –1653). He was the eldest son of the notable sculptor and architect Nicholas Stone  (1586-1647) and had two younger brothers who were also artists hence his moniker “Old Stone” as he was the oldest brother.

His father was appointed master-mason in 1619 to King James I and in 1626 to King Charles I. Working in the baroque style, Nicholas Stone was the mason responsible for building Inigo Jones’ Banqueting House in Whitehall London and a number of very elaborate funerary monuments including the remarkable monument to the poet, minister and orator Dr John Donne in St Paul’s Cathedral.

His career came to an abrupt end with the outbreak of the civil war. Like Inigo Jones, he was perceived by the Puritans as a royalist. One son fought for the Royalists during the civil war and Nicholas was imprisoned.

During the terrible years and battles of the civil war, Queen Henrietta Maria travelled extensively both to spend time with her husband and to visit her brother in France to raise money for their cause and to ensure their children were safe. On the restoration of her son as Charles II, she returned to England but went back to France in 1661 to arrange the marriage of her youngest daughter Henrietta to the Duke of Orleans, the only brother of Louis XIV, which considerably helped English relations with the French.

In 1662, after her daughter’s wedding, Henrietta Maria returned again to England accompanied by her nephew Prince Rupert but by 1665, suffering badly from bronchitis which she blamed on the damp British weather, she retired permanently to France where her nephew Louis XIV regularly consulted her on matters of state. She died there in 1669.

Her legacy remains not least because the North American Province of Maryland, a haven for Roman Catholic settlers, was named in her honour as Queen Mary.

Thus, Geordie and I are thrilled on many levels for Queen Henrietta Maria to settle into her new room at Highclere and to share her with those who wish to visit.