Oil on canvas, 60 x 78 inches. Memorial Art Gallery, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York.

In 1792 Robert Bowyer announced his plans to commission sixty painters to create pictures illustrating David Hume's History of England (1754-62). The project was modelled on Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery, and like Alderman Boydell, Bowyer wanted to encourage the finest artists of the day to turn their talents to history painting and to choose subjects from the nation's past.

Wheatley did not precisely carry out the terms of Bowyer's commission, however. In his history Hume notes the accepted opinion that Richard was murdered by Sir Pierce Exton at Pomfret Castle in 1400, but his conclusion is that Richard probably died of hunger rather than from execution by Exton. "Historians differ," Hume says, "with regard to the manner in which he was murdered."

It was long the prevailing opinion, that Sir Piers Exton, and others of his guard, fell upon him the Castle of Pomfret, where he was confined, and despatched him with their halberts. But it is more probable that he was starved to death in prison; and after all sustenance was denied him, he prolonged his unhappy life, it is said, for a fortnight, before he reached the end of his miseries. This account is more consistent with the story, that his body was exposed in public, and that no marks of violence were observed upon it. He died in the thirty-fourth year of his age, and the twenty-third of his reign.

Wheatley clearly ignores Hume's conclusion and turns instead to Shakespeare's Richard II for his inspiration. At the end of the play (V.v), Richard has been tested to his limit and he cries, "Patience is stale, and I am weary of it." Wheatley's Richard, no victim of starvation, is a heroic figure whose contrast in vivid color and brightness fairly leaps from the canvas. In his fury he has killed two men and is about to hit another just as Exton strikes. Richard says as he dies,

That hand shall burn in never-quenching fire
That staggers thus my person. Exton, thy fierce hand
Hath with the king's blood stain'd the king's own land.
Mount, mount, my soul! thy seat is up on high;
Whilst my gross flesh sinks downward, here to die.

Exton, having acted on Henry's desire--"Have I no friend will rid me of this living fear?"--is immediately filled with remorse and reflects on Richard's valiant fight to save his life:

As full of valour as of royal blood:
Both have I spill'd; O would the deed were good!
For now the devil, that told me I did well,
Says that this deed is chronicled in hell.
This dead king to the living king I'll bear
Take hence the rest, and give them burial here.

Wheatley's painting, despite its origins in the history of David Hume, vividly captures the spirit of Shakespeare's Richard II and leaves the viewer with the same equivocal feelings that pit the reign of a despotic and selfish monarch against his God-anointed divine right to rule, no matter what.