Medium: oil
Size: 61 by 45.7 cm
Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1881
Original caption: ‘We were then conveyed to the Coronation chair, where my old friend … sat down in the chair, etc.’
This painting was auctioned at Phillips on 4 September 1981. Auctioned again at Sotheby’s in New York on 2 December 1986, it fetched £933, or $1,400. The picture is reproduced in the exhibition catalogue.
Athenaeum, 19 March 1881:
Mr. Eyre Crowe will probably contribute to the Royal Academy Exhibition … Sir R. De Coverley seated in the Coronation Chair at Westminster, while the Spectator (Addison) and the verger are looking on.
Athenaeum, 14 May 1881:
The incident of the knight’s seating himself in the coronation chair is not one of the best of Mr. Crowe’s works. Still, the figure of Sir Roger is typical and his pose is good.
Art Journal, August 1881:
Represents the incident narrated in Addison’s Spectator of Sir Roger seating himself in the coronation chair at Westminster, and inquiring, on the verger’s telling him that the stone underneath was called Jacob’s Pillow, what authority there was for saying that Jacob had ever been in Scotland.
Eyre Crowe (1824-1910) 