The Murder of Edward, Prince of Wales, at Tewkesbury by James Northcote

Maidstone Museum & Bentlif Art Gallery Oil on canvas, 231 x 195 cm Collection: Maidstone Museum & Bentlif Art Gallery

James Northcote, RA was the son of a Plymouth watchmaker fortunate enough to be admitted to Reynolds’s friendship and studio in his mid-twenties. After five years he went to Rome to prepare for a career as a “history” painter, which was definately a mistake.

He was a prolific, if pedestrian portraitist but a tolerably good animal painter. Northcote is probably best remembered for his literary works, including his informative 'Memoirs of Sir Joshua Reynolds'. This painting depicts an incident towards the end of the Wars of the Roses after the Battle of Tewkesbury 4th May 1471, which the Prince of Wales and his mother lost. The scene is full of rather stagy emotion and deals with a type of art which is not popular today. The painting was probably not worked out in detail beforehand. During its restoration in early 1990 many changes of position of limbs and accessories were discovered. Northcote’s rather slapdash technique (fashionable at the time) and his liberal use of the non-drying bitumen pigment, made this work difficult to conserve to an exhibitable standard. Today we are able to enjoy a painting which is able to inform us about the tastes of Regency Britain and the Victorian collector.