ABSTRACT
William III was born into a great age of portraiture and of royal portraiture especially. In 2002, the tercentenary of William III's death, no exhibition was mounted in Britain to commemorate him. Even in the Netherlands, the country of William's birth and upbringing, the two commemorative exhibitions organised for the tercentenary were modest in scope. In a picture destined for Breda, the chief city of William's hereditary barony, the infant prince is shown in the arms of his mother, Mary Stuart. The orange tree towards which William is pointing was of course a familiar and enduring symbol of the Orange-Nassau dynasty. It was probably intended for the Elector Frederick William of Brandenburg, William's uncle and guardian and the most important of his German relatives. Virtually all of the portraits painted of William III while he was Stadholder and later king were copied by Dutch or English engravers and given wider currency as a result.
