The Children of Edward
Paul Delaroche (1797-1856) · 1830
Two boys sit on a great curtained bed in a dark room in the Tower of London. The elder, Edward the Fifth, the uncrowned king of England, stares out at nothing, a book open on his knee; his younger brother Richard, duke of York, leans against him and turns his head towards the door. At their feet a small dog stares at the strip of light under the door. Everything is described with the finish of a Flemish interior, velvet, carved bedpost, pale faces and dark clothes. The murderers are outside. The picture stops one second before.
Delaroche painted the picture in eighteen thirty, signing it at the lower left, and showed it at the Salon of eighteen thirty one, where it was one of the great successes of the year. The subject comes from Shakespeare's Richard the Third and from the taste for English history that Walter Scott had spread through France. The Ministry of Commerce and Public Works acquired the canvas for six thousand francs, and it hung in the Luxembourg museum from November eighteen thirty one before passing to the Louvre. No violence is shown, only suspense.
Did You Know? The little dog is the only one who has understood what is about to happen: it stares at the light under the door where the murderers are standing.
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