Owner Comments:
Purchased on 5/29/2014 in a Heritage Auction (Monthly World and Ancient Coin Auction - Selections from the Eric P. Newman Collection #241418), Lot #17324.
Ex: Eric P. Newman Collection
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The equestrian statue of Charles I in Charing Cross, London, is a work by the French sculptor Hubert Le Sueur, probably cast in 1633. Its location at Charing Cross is on the former site of the most elaborate of the Eleanor crosses erected by Edward I, which had stood for three and a half centuries until 1647. It also marks the official center of London, and the point to and from which many distances to and from London are measured. The statue faces down Whitehall towards Charles I's place of execution at Banqueting House.
The first Renaissance-style equestrian statue in England, it was commissioned by Charles's Lord High Treasurer Richard Weston for the garden of his country house in Roehampton, Surrey (now in South London). Following the English Civil War the statue was sold to a metal-smith to be broken down, but he hid it until the Restoration. It was installed in its current, far more prominent location in the center of London in 1675, and the elaborately carved plinth dates from that time.