We spent last night going through our Charles I exhibition with Per Rumberg, one of its brilliant co-curators. What struck me more forcefully than before if the astonishing representation of work by Van Dyck and how productive he was from the moment when he arrived in London in 1632 as the principalle paynter in ordinary to their majesties (note the plural), including the two gigantic equestrian pieces, one, formal, for the Long Gallery in St. James’s Palace in 1633, and the other, more rural, for the Prince’s Gallery in Hampton Court. And how delusional all this grand image-making proved to be.
You are so right – Per Rumberg has done a brilliant job with Charles I – a superb appointment of yours. This will go down as one of the great RA exhibitions, exactly the exhibition that Francis Haskill must have envisaged when he conceived The King’s Pictures, and there could be no greater compliment than that, surely ?