Anthony van Dyck, Charles I in the Hunting Field (detail)

Talk

Work in focus: 'Charles I (Le Roi à la chasse)' by Anthony van Dyck

Monday 19 February 2018 11am - 12pm

The Reynolds Room, Burlington House, Royal Academy of Arts, Piccadilly. Entrance via the Keeper's House.

£8, £5 concessions.

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Desmond Shawe-Taylor, Surveyor of The Queen's Pictures at the Royal Collection, discusses Anthony van Dyck’s Charles I (Le Roi à la chasse): one of the most emphatically understated of van Dyck's royal portraits, yet one of the most significant in Charles I’s collection.

The favourite Old Master paintings of Charles I reveal that he valued poetry over power: he liked detailed landscape, softly-described forms and the effects of atmospheric light and shade. The painting Charles I ('Le Roi à la chasse') has a visual poetry learned from the best Italian masters in Charles's collection, meaning van Dyck must have looked carefully at the most sumptuous displays in Whitehall Palace before creating this, his most poetic image of the King.

The action in the painting is stylish rather than heroic – a moment of nonchalant ease after the excitement of the chase. In this talk, Desmond Shawe-Taylor explores the fine detail of this major work within the collection of Charles I.

Desmond Shawe-Taylor is co-curator of the Royal Academy exhibition Charles I: King and Collector. He has been Surveyor of The Queen's Pictures since 2005, before which he was Director of Dulwich Picture Gallery.

£8, £5 concessions.

Sold out