A little Art History with your Downton Abbey

Happy New Year! I'm going to use the popular series Downton Abbey as a jumping off point to wax..waxily...about the surge of high quality images available online, but also comment on the vagaries of digital representation. Ready?

If you haven't been watching Downton Abbey, you've got a little catching up to. Many viewers describe it as "fairy-tale" because for Americans, it is. Our labor and social history and the general Disneyfication of anything with the world "castle" or "princess" conjure up a confection of ahistorical confabulation. Add in some fantastic costuming and gossip-y storylines, and we're hooked. The fashions and visual culture of the early twenties are captivating, women's fashions in particular.

There is quite a bit of verbiage already available on the web about the "real" Downton Abbey, Highclere Castle. I want to focus on something a friend mentioned this morning while we were talking about the show. He said, "I love that painting that hangs in the dining room, I just want to spend a long time looking at it." So, I decided to see if we could have a virtual visit with it. The first thing to do: find the name of the painting and the artist. This was conveniently provided to me by Leslie Van Buskirk's article on the LA Times blog, online at:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/home_blog/2012/01/downton-abbey-location.html

It states, "that gigantic portrait of a man on a horse that’s often visible behind Hugh Bonneville’s head in the dining room on “Downton Abbey” is a 1635 portrait of King Charles I by Anthony van Dyck."

Now, I already knew about the massive project to digitize all of the UK's painting, charmingly called "Your Paintings" which is online at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/about/

You can search or browse this site in several ways. Since this is an ongoing project, there are collections not yet represented in this online archive. I found several images of Charles I by Van Dyck, including Charles I on horseback. However, in checking the locations, noted that Highclere is not yet part of the online collection. I spent a little time comparing the available versions, and was very interested in noting the differences I could detect from the digital versions. For example:

Here's a link to a version of the portrait held at Apsley House:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/paintings/charles-i-16001649-on-horseback-with-monsieur-de-st-antoine

Open it in a new tab, then open this version from the Royal Collection in another browser window:

Charles I with M. de St Antoine

You can read about the provenance of the work, and magnify the image.

But what about the painting that hangs in Highclere Castle? The website for Highclere provides a small gallery of images, which you can see at: http://www.highclerecastle.co.uk/about-us/the-state-rooms.html#

Look at the bottom right of the screen to find "Gallery." At present, the Charles I portrait is the 23rd of 24 images.

Now that I've sent you to three different places, take a minute to compare the versions. I would have you pay particular attention to the color of the draping fabric as well as the color of the sky behind Charles I in each of the versions.

It is time for lunch now, but when I return, it will be with the printed Van Dyck: a complete catalogue of the paintings in hand for additional mulling.