CONTACT SHEET The personal passions and public causes of Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, are revealed, as photographs, prints and letters are published online today to mark the 200th anniversary of his birth After Roger Fenton, Prince Albert, May 1854, 1889 copy of the original Queen Victoria commissioned a set of private family photographs to be taken by Roger Fenton at Buckingham Palace in May 1854, including a portrait of Albert gazing purposefully at the camera, his legs crossed, in front of a temporary backdrop that had been created. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert In a letter beginning ‘My dearest cousin’, written in June 1837, Albert congratulates Victoria on becoming Queen of England, wishing her reign to be long, happy and glorious. Royal Archives / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2019 Queen Victoria kept volumes of reminiscences between 1840 and 1861. In these pages she describes how Prince Albert played with his young children, putting a napkin around their waist and swinging them backwards and forwards between his legs. The Queen also sketched the scenario (left) Royal Archives / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2019 Press Office, Royal Collection Trust, York House, St James’s Palace, London SW1A 1BQ T. +44 (0)20 7839 1377,
[email protected], www.rct.uk After Franz Xaver Winterhalter, Bracelet with photographs of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert’s nine children, 1854–7 This bracelet was given to Queen Victoria by Prince Albert for her birthday on 24 May 1854. John Jabez Edwin Mayall, Frame with a photograph of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, 1860 In John Jabez Edwin Mayall’s portrait of 1860, the Queen stands dutifully at her seated husband’s side, her head bowed.