Detail of Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, December 2022

Title: Henry Frederick (1594–1612), Prince of Wales, with Sir John Harington (1592–1614), in the Hunting Field

Artist: Robert Peake the Elder

Date: 1603

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 79 1/2 x 58 in. (201.9 x 147.3 cm)

Credit Line: Purchase, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, 1944

Object No.: 44.27

Prince Henry was the son of Anne of Denmark and James VI of Scotland, who after the death of Queen Elizabeth I in 1603 succeeded as James I of England. The prince is depicted here at the age of nine at the climax of the hunt, striking a ceremonial blow to the neck of the dead stag, while his companion Sir John Harington, who was two years older, holds the antlers. Harington's father, the first Baron Harington of Exton, writing in 1606, mentioned that his son was with the prince, “from whom I hope he will gain great advantage from such towardly genius as he hath, even at these years” (Wiffen 1833). In 1603, the Haringtons had been placed in charge of the upbringing of the prince's sister Elizabeth, who remained with them until her marriage.

In 1741 George Vertue saw this picture at Wroxton Abbey, and it was described there by Thomas Warton in 1772. The work may have descended in the North family, or, alternatively, in the family of the Earls of Downe, passing to the Norths through Frances, daughter of the third Earl, who in 1672 married Francis North, Baron Guilford, and who later inherited Wroxton Abbey. Most likely, as it apparently never belonged to the royal family, the first owner would have been Baron Harington of Exton.

Writing in 1963, Roy Strong, on the advice of Oliver Millar, was the first to attribute the portrait to Robert Peake the Elder. More recently, it has been associated with a 1603 portrait by Peake of the prince's sister Elizabeth (National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London). A slightly later version of this composition, in which Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex, replaces Sir John Harington, is in the Royal Collection.

This is an important early example of the dismounted equestrian portrait, which would have such a long life in English art, and Peake’s elaborate landscape setting establishes a groundbreaking precedent. Prince Henry’s bold pose reiterates a pattern famously devised by Holbein for his portrait of Henry VIII in the mural at Whitehall Palace (destroyed 1698). What Peake fails to convey, however, is the lively physicality and precocious maturity of the much admired, short-lived young prince.

The painting was engraved by Clamp after a drawing by Samuel Harding (ill. in Harding 1795).

[2010; adapted from Baetjer 2009]


Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/437262