Charles I: King and Collector – Royal Academy, London

I didn’t like this exhibition.  There, I’ve said it.  And I had been looking forward to it, too, after reading five star reviews in various publications.  There are some showstopping paintings, if you’re into old masters, a few recognisable works, and a lot of loans from big hitting collections like the Louvre and the Prado, but I personally found the curation of the exhibition to be something of a wasted opportunity.  Why?  Well, I’m glad you asked.

The main issue that I had with the exhibition was that it was too art historical.  Too art historical?  But it’s an art exhibition of historical paintings!  Indeed, but what I mean by that is that the exhibition has been trumpeted as a once-in-a-lifetime reunification of works once in the royal collection, which became a sort of painting diaspora after Charles I’s execution in 1649.  But once you’re inside, it’s mostly artistic canon: a bit on the context in which the collection was built up, then galleries grouped by school/period/geography/subject (Northern Renaissance, family portraits, etc.).  Where is the history?  The drama?  The life histories of the paintings as objects rather than as artworks?

There are some nods to the latter, for example the mentions on the labels of where the works originally hung (if known), and any information from the sale of the royal collection after Charles’ execution.  But what I would have loved to see is a different presentation bringing the story to the forefront, like a chronological picture of the collection forming, disbanding and (partly) coming back together, or a focus on what he bought, what he commissioned, and what’s not here and why.  Even just a life history of key paintings in the exhibition texts would have kept me satisfied, for example XXX was bought by YYY, sold to the King of France, and is now in the Louvre because IT HAS BEEN PART OF THE COLLECTION OF NOT ONE BUT TWO EXECUTED MONARCHS!  It’s interesting information which tells the history of Europe through important paintings in their own right.  Is the fact that so many of the loans come from the Royal Collection reason for the exhibition being quite muted on the non-artistic story?  Who knows.  There’s a Charles II exhibition on at the Queen’s Gallery so it might be interesting to compare and contrast.

I would also have liked to have been able to visualise what the works looked like in situ.  Presumably we have a fair idea of what Whitehall Palace looked like, and can trace a lot of the works back to the room they were once hung in, so something interactive or a bit of a video reconstructing this would have been nice.  It’s possible though that I’m being entirely too demanding: old masters don’t tend to float my boat, so I want a bit more from an exhibition.  There are exceptions, the Royal Academy’s own Moroni exhibition being one that I did enjoy, but in general I tend to skip through these types of shows quite quickly, focus in on a few paintings that I really like (this one and an accompanying painted version are quite good), and then escape.  In part this was made difficult at this exhibition because it was jam packed.  I thought I was safe seeing something relatively academic on a Sunday, but apparently not.

So there you have my jumble of thoughts on Charles I: King and Collector.  To summarise: good paintings, some very interesting, more could be made of the story behind them.  Plus more interpretation materials please for visitors who, despite having museological training, sometimes have short attention spans.  Either way, I would suggest going to the Royal Academy’s exhibition if you love a Mantegna, a Van Dyke or a Gentileschi, but not if you’re primarily an avid historian.