Art News

National Gallery Opens Exhibition of Major Loans of Paintings by Delaroche

LONDON.- The exhibition features seven major international loans of paintings by Delaroche including ‘The Princes in the Tower’, 1830 and ‘Young Christian Martyr’, 1854–5 (both Louvre), and ‘Strafford on his way to Execution,’ 1835 (private collection). Displayed alongside are Delaroche’s expressive preparatory drawings for Lady Jane and a selection of comparative paintings and prints by his contemporaries, including Eugène Lami, Claude Jacquand and François-Marius Granet. Monumental in scale, poignant in subject matter and uncanny in its realism, Delaroche’s depiction of the 17-year-old, who was Queen of England for just nine days, created a sensation when first unveiled at the Paris Salon of 1834. It appeared to usher in an entirely new form of painting. But what inspired a French artist in the 1830s to depict the final moments of a 16th-century English queen? In post-