Finding a title for and the painter of this unfinished picture – which has languished in the stock of the old art dealing firm of Agnew’s, where it was long thought to be by Millais – has been challenging. It is a scene from Stuart history painted in the 1860s, perhaps by a member of the St John’s Wood Clique, a group of painters concerned with dramatic stories of British history. It has the closest affinity with the later work of one of the Clique, William Grant. Up to 1853, Grant mostly exhibited large bible subjects, but thereafter he painted history. The episodic construction of groups of figures in his larger paintings have a theatrical quality, like tableaux vivants, typical of his work. For example, at the Royal Academy in 1860, Grant exhibited A Page from the History of the Civil War (no 249), depicting Henrietta Maria, the Queen of Charles I, hiding from the Battle of Marston Moor with her ladies. Probably Grant’s best customer was the collector BG Windus, and at his sale at Christie’s in 1868 amongst the several paintings by Grant there was one titled The Eve of Martyrdom (lot 188), not exhibited and since lost. It would make sense if this were our painting, left unfinished at Grant’s early death in 1866 at the age of 37. The ‘Martyr’ of the title, then, is King Charles I (known by some as ‘Charles the Martyr’), and the scene is the eve of his execution in 1649. The figures are in mid-seventeenth century dress, and Charles I’s children are amongst the group: in 1649, the future Charles II was 19, Mary the Princess Royal was 18, the future James II was 16, Princess Elizabeth (who recorded the event in her diary, and may be the girl to right of centre) was 14, and Princess Anne was 12. The three Princesses and their ladies, and the two Princes, are watching the King depart after his final leave taking, with varying degrees of horror and concern, and one lady is in a swoon on the floor, her body only sketchily drawn in.