Following the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the Stuart King James II, his wife, Mary of Modena, and their son James Francis Edward were exiled to France. This exquisite oil sketch is for a much larger composition, and presents what would have been Britain’s Catholic alternative to the Protestant Hanoverians. The formal group portrait shows a deposed royal family determined to regain the British throne. However, all of James’s attempts to do so remained unsuccessful. Presented to the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII, by the Marquis de Breteuil in 1894 Cat. 2