I am Mark Mitchell, the Holcombe T. Green Curator of American Paintings and Sculpture here at the Yale University Art Gallery. We are looking at Edwin Austin Abbey's "Richard, Duke of Gloucester, and Lady Anne" from 1896.

As the title suggests, this is Richard, the duke of Gloucester, in red; he is the hunchback, the title character of Shakespeare's tragedy of Richard III. He is conniving to become the king of England, and he is, at this very moment, in the funeral procession of the late King Henry VI, whom he has personally killed. He is wooing the king's daughter-in-law, the lady Anne. I should say that she is widowed also by Richard's hand. So he has killed her husband and her father-in-law, and now he is wooing her in the funeral procession for her father-in-law. You can see in the very center of the painting that he's holding a ring, and he is asking her to marry him. He thereby hopes to ascend one step closer to the throne. And you see her fist reaching out to him, pushing him away, resisting his entreaties. This is interestingly the very beginning of the play. This is the first act, scene 2, of "Richard III."

I've heard such interesting interactions with our educators and the public around this painting. I know that very few elementary school students know the story of Richard III, and yet I've seen with unerring accuracy that the students are able to decode the narrative of the painting and what's happening here. It's really astonishing. They pick up things that I would not have thought about, like the way in which the red of Richard's sword blade reflects his bright red coat, suggestive of violence. It seems like maybe this sword has been used, perhaps. The students picked right up on that and said, "He has done something bad, and he has killed someone or hurt someone."

It is an incredibly elaborate series of historical events compressed into a single narrative moment in Abbey's conception—and one that was widely admired. It was shown in 1896 at the Royal Academy in London. Edwin Austin Abbey is an American painter, but he lived much of his life in England. You see here a painting that is and was considered one of his finest works and would really bring him to prominence in the London art scene.