Since few oil head studies by the artist are known to have survived, this work provides a fascinating insight into the artist’s working practice. With all the confidence of a great master, the portrait is painted with swiftly and confidently applied brushstrokes, capturing Henrietta’s animated and lively features reflecting a work painted in the moment and from life. The presence of a wide-collared lace ruff is suggested by the shadows created by her hair and large pearl-drop earring. Our composition is not dissimilar to an earlier finished portrait of the Princess (Fig. 1), now in the collection of the Museo del Prado, Madrid, which has wrongly been identified as our sitter’s elder sister, Elisabeth of France (1602 – 1644), who became Queen to Philip IV of Spain in 1615. In that portrait of Henrietta she is clearly a few years younger.

As the youngest daughter to the murdered ‘bon Roi’ Henri IV of France, and future wife to the executed British monarch King Charles I, Henriette-Marie’s life was rife with tragedy, upheaval and controversy. Henriette-Marie’s life was first tragically impacted by the assassination of her father in 1610, when she was still but a baby. At that point her now widowed mother, Marie de’Medici (1575 - 1642), as Queen declared herself Regent to her son the Dauphin Louis (1601 – 1643), who was still a minor. As a Florentine Medici, and with all that came with that family’s immense wealth and prestige, she set about connecting the now vulnerable Bourbon court with the most influential families in Europe to protect their interests and legacy. Henriette-Marie thus witnessed, from an early age, how her elder siblings were being married off to the most important royal and noble heirs in Europe: namely, her sisters Elisabeth, who became Philip IV’s Queen of Spain, and Christine, who became the Duchess of Savoy. Even without such tactful matchmaking, with a revered Bourbon for a father and a prosperous Medici for a mother, Henriette-Marie was always going to be courted by the most powerful heads of state.

Although Britain’s Prince of Wales, the future Charles I (1600 – 1649), was intended to marry the Spanish Infanta, Maria Anna (1606 – 1646), the decade-long negotiations fell through in 1623.[1] Charles, thus, turned to the best alternative option - the unattached Princess Henriette-Marie of France. It was unprecedented for a Catholic princess to be married into a Protestant court, so many dispensations between Britain and France, as well as the Vatican, were sought and promised, though many of which were never formally observed. A proxy wedding was held in Paris in Spring 1625, Charles having ascended the throne as Charles I unexpectedly at the sudden death of James VI & I earlier in the year. The young couple met as king and queen for the first time on Henriette-Marie’s arrival into Dover in June 1625.

The early years of their marriage were somewhat marred by the systemic incompatibility of her Catholic routines within court life and the Duke of Buckingham’s pre-existing influence over the king. Many of issues regarding her faith were ironed out early and, with the assassination of Buckingham in 1628, the relationship between the king and queen became much more intimate. Their union was loving and fruitful, bearing two future kings - Charles II and James VII & II – and two princesses of international prominence – Mary, Princess of Orange, and Henrietta, Duchess of Orléans.

One of the great shared passions between Charles and Henrietta Maria, as she was to become known in Britain, were the arts; Charles had first identified the need for an impressive art collection as an indicator of power and cultural sophistication when he visited the Spanish court in 1623. Wanting to rival the Habsburgs’ vast holdings of Renaissance masterpieces, as well as patronage of the most talented contemporary artists, such as Peter Paul Rubens (1577 – 1640) and Anthony van Dyck (1599 – 1641), Charles acquired, at enormous expense, part of the famed Gonzaga collection from the Duke of Mantua in 1628.[2] Henrietta Maria had inherited rich, fashionable tastes through her mother’s patronage in Paris; indeed, her favourite artist Orazio Gentileschi (1563 – 1639), who she first met in Paris when he worked for her mother, was employed exclusively by the English court from 1628 until his death.[3] As well as being a prominent patron, Henrietta Maria was also a frequent subject of important commissions; it has been estimated that the queen sat for the court’s favourite portrait painter, Anthony van Dyck, a total of twenty-five times during the 1630s, portraits which have come to define the image of the Caroline court.[4]

Charles I had not made any friends in Britain with the vast sums he had spent on acquiring the Gonzaga collection; which undoubtedly bestowed substantial cultural cache for his court, but it certainly did not serve as a beneficial asset to his increasingly overtaxed nation. Indeed, it arguably marks the genesis of his rapid fall from grace, which gathered great momentum when in 1629, taking the ‘divine right of kings’ too literally, he prorogued parliament, dissolving their authority over the crown. So lasted a decade of ‘Personal Rule’, where Charles ruled his kingdoms without the intervention of parliament and sourced funding for the court, primarily via forced loans and ship money from his subjects, which further sullied his reputation.

The privy purse was particularly burdened by debts associated with the king’s lavish spending and costs associated with religious wars between England, France, and Spain. This reached breaking point when Charles enforced the Anglican ‘Book of Common Prayer’, which was partly based upon several Catholic rites, upon his Scottish subjects in 1637, which roused great unrest in what was arguably his most loyal kingdom. The ensuing ‘Bishops’ War’ of 1639 marked the beginning of the ‘Wars of the Three Kingdoms’, which is today better known as the British Civil War – a drawn out, bitter and bloody confrontation about the powers of a monarchy and the authority of their Parliament.

The country was divided into those who supported the king (Royalists) and those who sided with the government (Parliamentarians). The early years of the 1640s were dominated by devastating battles, which further disenfranchised the nation with the royal family. In early 1642, the king and his family were forced out of London and the court was relocated to Oxford; it would be the last time that the king and queen would be together in the capital. By the end of the decade, Charles had lost all substantial support and was eventually arrested by the government’s army, who determined that permanent peace was impossible whilst the king lived. On 27 January 1649, a High Court of Justice, established by the Parliamentarians, charged Charles with high treason and sentenced to death. Three days after the trial, the king was beheaded outside of the Banqueting House in Whitehall; his final words: “I go from a corruptible to an incorruptible Crown, where no disturbance can be.” Thereafter followed eleven years of Parliamentary rule – a period known as the Interregnum - under the leadership of Commander Oliver Cromwell (1599 – 1658), when the monarchy was formally abolished, and the Stuarts were exiled from Britain.

Henrietta Maria had remained a loyal, valued consort during the early tribulations of Charles’s period of ‘Personal Rule’, however her Catholicism proved an unshakable affliction to the royalist cause, and her faithful affiliation with her husband proved too dangerous to her young family. So, it was decided that she, and her daughter Mary, who was engaged to marry William, Prince of Orange, would flee to Holland where protection was promised in The Hague by her sister-in-law, Elizabeth of Bohemia, and the House of Orange. Henrietta Maria briefly returned to England in 1643, to rally the royalist forces after encouragement of international support from France and Denmark, and enjoyed a reunion with Charles in Oxford, which, amongst other things, resulted in her last pregnancy. Wishing to give birth in safer conditions, she left Oxford, not knowing she would never see her king again. Via Bath and Exeter, where she gave birth to Princess Henrietta Anne in June 1644, she made safe passage to France, where she would remain for much of the rest of her life. Her last letter to her husband upon her departure, she wrote:

“I hope yet to serve you. I am giving you the strongest proof of love that I can give; I am hazarding my life, that I may not incommode your affairs. Adieu, my dear heart. If I die, believe that you will lose a person who has never been other than entirely yours, and who by her affection has deserved that you should not forget her.”[5]

The Queen was warmly embraced by her sister-in-law Anne of Austria, and the new-born Henriette Anne was immediately absorbed within the French court and was raised as one of their own; Minette, as her brother Prince Charles nicknamed her, would become her mother’s constant companion for the next twenty years. This company was relished by Henrietta Maria for, upon news of her husband’s execution at the beginning of 1649, she fell into total shock and never fully recovered. She spent the rest of her years dressed in mourning, promoting her son’s claim to the throne and raising Minette, all the while aided by her constant faith. Despite regular attempts of reviving support for the exiled Stuarts, in particular Prince Charles as heir-apparent, her voice became hushed within the courts of France and Holland, who had previously been her most compassionate allies.

Upon the death of Oliver Cromwell, the Interregnum ceased, and the restoration of the crown was made official with the coronation of Charles II in 1660. With this, the new king’s mother was rejuvenated, and she returned triumphantly to her former home. Sadly, it was tempered by the tragic deaths of two of her other children: Henry, Duke of Gloucester, and Princess Mary, who both died of smallpox. Henrietta Maria took kindly to Charles’s queen, the Portuguese princess Catherine of Braganza, and enjoyed several happy years back in her former residence, Somerset House. However, with her compromised health it was encouraged that she take refuge from the impending London plague of 1665 back in France. She became a stricter observer of her faith for the remainder of her life, spending most of her time at the Chaillot convent. Her health failed her in 1669, suffering from insomnia and fevers, and she did at her home, Colombes, in early September 1669. Her posthumous reputation was clouded by those who took issue with her religion, however much of it has been recovered so that she is now characterised as a tenacious, assertive, and focussed political figure during Britain’s most divisive period.[6]

Marie-Antoine Didot (1766 – 1835), known as Didot de Saint-Marc, was a lawyer, art historian, collector, and dealer active during the Revolutionary period in France. Supposedly, the purpose of his collecting was “to have his acquisitions engraved for future use in his publication [Sur la Peinture et sur la vie de peintres]”, a venture that was likely financed by his family’s publishing company under the guidance of the connoisseur-dealer Jean-Baptiste-Pierre Lebrun (1748 – 1813). [7] Part of Didot’s collection was catalogued in 1811, probably with a view to selling it, and it is here we find reference to a portrait of “Henriette de France, dans sa première jeunesse” by Frans Pourbus II. Only a decade later, it is referenced again in another auction in England, where it is listed as the property of the London-based art dealer Thomas Emmerson. Emmerson was arguably London’s leading art dealer during the first half of the nineteenth century and he actively sourced works from the continent, often buying collections en masse from the nobility, and either sold them through his own dealership or at auction; for example, the Paignon Dijouval collection was bought en bloc by Emmerson and the auctioneer Henry Phillips in 1821, many of these pictures were eventually sold at an auction held by Phillips in 1829. It seems more than probably that Emmerson acquired the present portrait directly from Didot de Saint-Marc soon after the 1811 catalogue was published, for the painting was not included in Didot’s subsequent estate auctions in 1814, 1817, and 1835.

[1] Known as ‘The Spanish Match’, which was intended to ally the two most powerful monarchies in Europe and bring peace to the Catholic crown of Spain and the Protestants in Britain.

[2] Both Rubens and Van Dyck subsequently worked for Charles in England and were knighted for their services to his court during the 1630s. ‘The Mantua purchase’ included masterpieces by Andrea Mantegna, Raphael, and Titian, many of which remain treasures of the British Royal Collection today.

[3] Such was her regard for the artist, the queen buried him at Somerset House, her primary residence.

[4] https://www-oxforddnb-com.lonlib.idm.oclc.org/display/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-12947?rskey=N9rrHQ&result=2

[5] M.A.E. Green, Letters of Queen Henrietta Maria, London 1857, p. 249.

[6] C.M. Hibbard, “Henrietta Maria (1609 – 1669)” from the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online edition 2008.

[7] D.A. Spieth, Revolutionary Paris and the Market for Netherlandish Art, Leiden 2017, p. 105.