Historical Painting Techniques, Materials, and Studio Practice

Figure 3. The Execution of Lady Jane Grey. Pencil drawing for the central group, 18 X 16.5
cm. London, British Museum {fo rmerly National Gallery, London}.
finished painting. The two other figures on the sheet are studies for Lady
Jane's ladies-in-waiting; neither has been squared up. That for the standing
figure has been used with little modification. The other figure in the Louvre
drawing appears to kneel and pray facing the central group; this composition
was not used in the final painting, in which the slumped position of the
attendant is very much as it is in the watercolor study-to greater dramatic
effect. The British Museum drawing shows Lady Jane and Sir John Brydges;
it has been used with little modification. There are small differences in details
of costume between the drawings used and the finished painting.
Apart from his use of draped figures in room sets, discussed above, the artist
was in the habit of making wax or plaster models of elements of the composition
when he felt there was a problem to be solved; a plaster model was
made of the two princes, for example, in The Children if Edward IV (1830,
Musee du Louvre) (30). This appears not to have been necessary for the Lady
Jane Grey.
The chosen drawn versions of the figures would then have been transferred
to the prepared canvas. The canvas for a painting of this size would have been
stretched to order, apparently from a single piece of medium-weight linen;
the largest stock canvas was a toile de 120 (about 1.3 X 1.9 m) (31). The roll
of canvas used was already primed with a ground of lead white in linseed oil.
Over this first priming, Delaroche then had a second ground-also of lead
white, but this time bound in walnut oil-applied to the stretched canvas.
Delaroche seems to have transferred designs for the single figures or groups
individually; infrared reflectography has revealed "squaring-up" lines under
the paint of Lady Jane's dress, her seated attendant, and in the area of the
Kirby and Roy 169