Overall: 22cm (8.6in) x 28cm (11in)
Half length original portrait of George V seated at his desk by modernist photographer E.O. Hoppé, signed and dated in ink on the image in the King’s hand ‘George, R.I.’, for George Rex Imperator; additionally signed in pencil on the lower image by the King and the photographer Emile Hoppé. Contained in a bespoke glazed frame.
The present portrait was published as a popular postcard by Raphael Tuck & Sons. The same sitting, of circa 1921, also produced an in left profile image that was printed in miniature for inclusion Queen Mary's Dolls' House, 1924. See Royal collections Trust RCIN 2931892.
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Emil Otto Hoppé (1878–1972) was an important and influential portrait and documentary photographer. Munich-born and educated in Vienna and Paris, he first studied photography while working for Deutsche Bank in London, prior to establishing his own studio in 1907; co-founding the London Salon of Photography in 1910; and holding his first solo exhibition in 1911. The same year he produced a famous series of portraits of dancers from Diaghilev’s Ballets Russess. Thereafter, he became much sought-after as a portraitist, photographing many of the century’s leading artists, writers and thinkers – among them Albert Einstein, Vaslav Nijinsky, George Bernard Shaw, HG Wells, Virginia Woolf, TS Eliot and Rudyard Kipling – as well as world leaders and royalty.