James I & VI (1566-1625)

James the First died in 1625. Van Dyck reached London seven years later, and the Royal Collection dates this canvas to 1632, with a question mark. The king in it was already dead when it was begun. Charles the First was gathering his family in paint for the Cross Gallery at Somerset House, and a father was needed for the set. Van Dyck took the head from a full-length of James by Paul van Somer, a Flemish painter who had worked for the king from life, and rebuilt everything around it. The armour came off, the regalia was moved, and the stiff pose was loosened. Then the arrangement fell apart. In 1651, two years after Charles was executed, Parliament paid off the dead king's creditors with his pictures, and this one went out of the Cross Gallery for 30 pounds to Edmund Harrison, the royal embroiderer, who was owed 800. It came back to the Crown at the Restoration.