Charles Robert Leslie (1794-1859)

Artist Name Charles Robert Leslie (1794-1859)
Title Happy Days of Charles I Family Portrait
Description This charming Victorian genre oil painting is by noted British genre artist Charles Robert Leslie. Painted circa 1840 it is a family portrait in an interior of Charles I and his wife Henrietta Marie of France with one of their young sons and dog with a servant behind them. Charles is holding a pocket watch to his son's ear. Their garments are painted in great detail and it is a lovely informal family portrait.

Charles I was King of England, King of Scotland, and King of Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649. Charles was born into the House of Stuart as the second son of King James VI of Scotland, but after his father inherited the English throne in 1603, he moved to England, where he spent much of the rest of his life. He became heir apparent to the three kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland in 1612 on the death of his elder brother Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales. An unsuccessful and unpopular attempt to marry him to the Spanish Habsburg princess Maria Anna culminated in an eight-month visit to Spain in 1623 that demonstrated the futility of the marriage negotiations. Two years later he married the Bourbon princess Henrietta Maria of France. Henrietta Maria of was queen consort of England, Scotland, and Ireland as the wife of King Charles I. She was mother of his two immediate successors, Charles II and James II and VII.
Provenance Patrick J B Payne, Manchester.
Ex Christie's.
Medium Oil on Canvas
Size 25 x 32 inches
Frame Housed in a fine ornate gilt swept frame, 40 inches by 33 inches and in good condition.
Condition Good condition.
Biography Charles Robert Leslie RA (19 October 1794 – 5 May 1859) was an English genre painter. Leslie was born in London to American parents. When he was five years of age he returned with them to the United States, where they settled in Philadelphia. Leslie completed his education and afterwards became apprenticed to a bookseller. He was, however, mainly interested in painting and drama, and when George Frederick Cooke visited the city he executed a portrait of the actor from recollection of him on the stage, which was considered a work of such promise that a fund was raised to enable the young artist to study in Europe. He left for London in 1811, bearing introductions which procured for him the friendship of West, Beechey, Allston, Coleridge and Washington Irving, being admitted as a student of the Royal Academy, where he carried off two silver medals. At first, influenced by West and Fuseli, he essayed high art, and his earliest important subject depicted Saul and the Witch of Endor; but he soon discovered his true aptitude and became a painter of cabinet-pictures, dealing, not like those of David Wilkie, with the contemporary life that surrounded him, but with scenes from the great masters of fiction, from Shakespeare and Cervantes, Addison and Molière, Swift, Sterne, Fielding and Smollett. In 1821, Leslie was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy, and five years later full Royal Academician. In 1827 he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Honorary Academician. In 1833, he left for America to become teacher of drawing in the military academy at West Point, but the post proved an irksome one, and in some six months he returned to England. He died 5 May 1859. Leslie was the brother of American author Eliza Leslie and United States Army soldier Thomas Jefferson Leslie. In April 1825 he married Harriet Honor Stone with whom he had six children. Their second son Sir Bradford Leslie was a noted bridge builder, and their youngest son, George Dunlop Leslie RA (1835–1921) a notable artist. He is buried in Kensal Green Cemetery.
Price SOLD
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