The Children of Edward

Delaroche visited the Tower of London in 1827 and came away fixed on one grim story: the two boy princes, Edward the Fifth and his younger brother, shut up there in 1483 and never seen alive again, their uncle taking the crown as Richard the Third. He painted them not at the murder but the moment before it, huddled together on a bed with a small dog that has heard something at the door and turned to look. When it went on show at the Paris Salon of 1831, crowds and critics alike were gripped. Delaroche had done his homework on 15th-century furniture and dress, and set the viewer so close that you seem to be in the room with the two frightened children.