Provenance:

Sotheby Parke Bernet (Canada) Inc., Toronto, 18th–19th October, 1976, page 63, lot 119, reproduced.
Waddington’s, Toronto, 27–30 October, 1980, page 137, lot 865A, reproduced.
Private Collection, Toronto.

Literature:

J. Russell Harper, Krieghoff, Toronto, 1979, pages 20 and 140.
Dennis Reid, Krieghoff/Images of Canada, Toronto, 1999, pages 52-53.

Note:

This scene is said to depict the signing of the abdication of Mary, Queen of Scots. Queen Elizabeth sent three noblemen, Lord Lindsay, Lord Ruthven and Sir Robert Melville, to Lochleven castle in Scotland to obtain her consent. The figure in armour who has grabbed her hand in anger in an effort to prevent the deed is possibly Mary’s husband, Lord Bothwell.

Harper writes that Krieghoff painted a series of copies of illustrations in the mid-1840s based on the life of Mary, Queen of Scots, the details of which were drawn from Sir Walter Scott’s historical novel The Abbot: “It was an ideal subject for Canada with its many sentimental Scottish connections.” Harper records that in January, 1847 an exhibition was held in Montreal and included two canvases illustrating The Abbot. A review The Pilot (Montreal, 29 January, 1847) mentions that the exhibition “devotes more attention to Krieghoff than to any of the [other artists], remarking that even his numerous copies have been securing for him ‘the highest praise of the connoisseurs’. In addition, his interiors are ‘the truest representations of home scenes in the [exhibition]’”.

It is interesting to note that one of Krieghoff’s best-known works depicting an interior subject, An Officer’s Room in Montreal, was also painted in 1846 (Sigmund Samuel Collection, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, as the Officer’s Trophy Room, no.954.188.2).