Provenance: Laporte Art Collection until 2009; Private collection.

Sixteen months of preparation preceded the one-day ceremony.  The Coronation took place in Westminster Abbey.  Soldiers from throughout the Commonwealth marched in parade prior to the Queen's arrival.  Laura Knight was one of the official artists commissioned to commemorate the event.  Her rapidly painted and highly coloured canvas  - which is likely to have been painted on the spot - records the Coronation procession passing through Oxford Street with  Scottish Guards on parade.    Oxford Street, although since rebuilt, was characterised by narrow frontages (still in evidence around the junction with Bond Street).

The coronation of the Queen was the first ever to be televised watched by 27 million British viewers (when its population was 37 million) who had acquired television sets especially for the event. It was also the world's first major international event to be broadcast on television with 750 commentators broadcasting descriptions in 39 languages.

The published official route.

The Queen's Coronation 1953 is the title of a major exhibition to be held at 
Buckingham Palace from Saturday, 27 July 2013 to Sunday, 29 September 2013.

We are grateful to Michael Barker for assistance.

IN 1953 a new building for Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut, the first major commission for Louis Kahn, opened.

Anthony Blunt's Art and Architecture in France 1500–1700 was published.

ARTWORKS created in 1953

Francis Bacon - Study after Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X

Alexander Calder – Acoustic Clouds (installation, University City of Caracas)

Jacob Epstein – Social Consciousness (sculpture group, Philadelphia)

Barbara Hepworth – Hieroglyph (sculpture)

Edward Hopper – Office in a Small City (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Willem de Kooning – Woman III

L. S. Lowry - Football Ground

Henry Moore – Draped Reclining Figure (bronze)

Mark Rothko – No. 61 (Rust and Blue)

Sir Muirhead Bone, (b. 1876) and Francis Picabia, (b.1879) died in 1953