THE QUEEN'S GALLERY PALACE OF HOLYROODHOUSE

Victoria and Albert: Our Lives in Watercolour 26 April – 3 October 2021

Plain English Script

Family and Home

1 Queen , 1855; Prince Albert, 1855 RCIN 913344; 913345

Welcome to The Queen’s Gallery at the Palace of Holyroodhouse and to this exhibition: Victoria and Albert: Our Lives in Watercolour. It is full of beautiful detailed paintings made with watercolours. They were commissioned and collected by and Prince Albert and they bring to life the excitement and variety of the 20 years of their marriage.

Nowadays watercolours are often associated with landscape painting. Victoria and Albert thought that they could be used for other subjects as well as landscapes, such as the appearance of a room, or the spectacle of a state visit. They could also be used to make accurate portraits – just like these two, painted by Franz Xaver Winterhalter when Victoria and Albert were both in their mid-thirties.

Art was one of the royal couple’s great shared passions. They spent many evenings looking at pictures together. From their childhood and through their adult lives, both of them jumped on opportunities to draw and paint. This made them very good at commissioning and collecting art.

They understood how to put a painting together and how to work with colours and had a detailed understanding of the watercolours they were collecting and commissioning. They would sometimes suggests changes if they thought they would improve the work.

In this exhibition the watercolours are organised by theme. They show different sides of Victoria and Albert’s lives – as young parents and also as public figures. These were times of big change in British society, in some of which they were personally involved.

The watercolours have been put in frames for this exhibition, but originally most of them were mounted in a series of albums that Victoria and Albert called ‘View Albums’. These albums were some of their most treasured possessions.

As you make your way through this exhibition, we hope you will get a feeling of what it was like for the royal couple to sit together, looking through the pages of these albums, remembering together important people, places and occasions.

Before you go up the stairs to the main galleries, be sure to watch the short film showing how the beautiful facsimile of one of Victoria and Albert’s original View Albums – displayed here – was made by the Royal Bindery especially for this exhibition.

2 JAMES ROBERTS Queen Victoria’s tree at , 1850 RCIN 919812

It is Christmas Eve 1850 in Windsor Castle. Outside, the air is ‘raw and damp’ but in the warmth of the castle excitement is growing as Victoria, Albert, their children and the Queen’s mother, the Duchess of Kent, prepare to exchange Christmas presents. It was the German tradition to do this on Christmas Eve. Lighting dozens of tiny candles on several Christmas trees was a signal that the time was drawing near.

Later Victoria wrote in her diary: ‘my beloved Albert first took me to my tree and table, covered by such numberless gifts, really too much, too magnificent. I am delighted with the really splendid picture in water colours by Corbould.’

In this watercolour, by James Roberts, Corbould’s painting is on the easel on the right-hand side and a picture of it is below:

Other presents were arranged on the Christmas tree table, including vases and bronze statues. Amongst the smaller items at the front, there may have been a bracelet designed specially by Albert as a gift for Victoria, which she also mentioned in her diary.

Throughout their marriage Victoria and Albert often gave each other artworks as gifts. They would commission or buy works for one another to give at Christmas or on birthdays or other special occasions.

Roberts was one of a number of artists who painted inside views of the various places where Victoria and Albert lived. These paintings show how they were decorated in the 19th century. Sometimes there are no people included in the paintings but their personal belongings – sheet music on a piano, a book on a table, or a shawl draped on a chair – make the rooms feel like a home, just as they appeared to Victoria and Albert. They may have lived in palaces but they were also homes and places where they lived their family life. On Christmas Eve 1850, with seven children around, that was very lively.

Queen Victoria wrote: ‘The Boys could think of nothing but the swords we had given them and Bertie of some armour which, however, he complained, pinched him!’

On other evenings at Windsor, Victoria and Albert would often spend time together in The Print Room, arranging and enjoying the miniatures, drawings and watercolours she had inherited.

The Print Room at Windsor Castle

Albert was very keen on organising things, sorting them out and arranging them in order. It was something he did all his life. He furnished the Print Room at Windsor with cabinets which he designed himself. Victoria records in her diary that they would often go to the Print Room after dinner at Windsor.

The room is called the Print Room but prints are just a part of the collection. The most important items there are drawings and watercolours: they are original works rather than copies as prints often are. These include the Old Master drawings – works by Leonardo, Holbein, Canaletto, Michelangelo and others. They are some of the greatest works of art in the world and some of most prized pieces in the . Albert and Victoria had little

interest in collecting Old Master drawings, but they were very keen to arrange this fantastic collection.

When they started to collect watercolours, Albert and Victoria arranged them in date order in the series of nine View Albums. After Victoria died it seemed only natural that these albums should be placed in the Print Room alongside all the wonderful works they had organised together 50 or 60 years before.

3 SIR WILLIAM ROSS (1794–1860) Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, and Prince Alfred, dated 1847 RCIN 913818

Here six-year-old Bertie – later King Edward the Seventh – turns to his three-year-old brother, Prince Alfred as he leads him by the hand. Painting portraits of children is not easy. But this artist, the celebrated painter of miniatures, Sir William Ross, was used to coping with fidgeting and wriggling by younger members of the royal family. Like many of Victoria and Albert’s favourite artists he received regular commissions from them. His first painting of the royal

children was of the boys’ older sister Vicky, the Princess Royal, in her cradle, when she was less than a month old.

Artists like Ross got to know their subjects very well as they painted them at several stages in their lives so that the sitter and the artist became close to each other. When Ross died Vicky wrote, in a letter to her mother the Queen, that she would always remember Ross as a ‘good, kind, simple-hearted old man’.

In this portrait the young Princes are wearing Highland dress (Royal Stuart tartan) but Ross painted them at Windsor Castle, not in Scotland. The outfits suggest to us that their parents loved Scotland, where they had celebrated Albert’s birthday a few months before. Bertie, dressed like he is here, had recited a poem by Sir Walter Scott to his Papa. Victoria and Albert were so delighted with this portrait of their young sons that they gave prints of it as Christmas presents to members of the royal household. This was a very public sign of their admiration for Ross’s talents.

4 JAMES ROBERTS (c.1800–67) The Marble Corridor, , dated 1852 RCIN 923463

In the early years after she became queen and then when she got married, Victoria enjoyed holidays in on the south coast of England. Her uncle, George the Fourth had made Brighton very fashionable. As a wife and mother, she longed for time with her family away from the eyes of the public. The Prime Minister suggested to Albert that he visit Osborne House on the . Albert was immediately impressed by its sheltered woodland location, private sandy beaches, high position and peaceful views across the river Solent. We can just see the river through the arched doorway in this watercolour by James Roberts. The house, however, was too small, so plans for a new, bigger house were drawn up.

Albert had input into the design of the new house, which was in an Italian Renaissance style, with clean lines and cool marble. It brought a little piece of the Mediterranean to England. The family spent their holidays there in the spring and the summer for the rest of their marriage.

In this watercolour of the inside of the new Osborne House we see the Marble Corridor which linked the formal State rooms and the household wing where the royal family’s bedrooms, sitting, dining and billiard rooms were. Roberts’ watercolour gives a detailed record of its appearance – from the Minton floor tiles to the arrangement of sculptures, which are still in the Royal Collection today. The three children making their way down the corridor are probably Princess Alice, Prince Alfred and Princess Louise. They have a dachshund with them, which was one of their parents’ favourite breeds of dog.

It looks like the children were painted in after the painting was first finished. They were no doubt included to bring some life to the painting which would have been bare and cold without them.

The next painting featured in these notes is in this room, in the section on the Palace of Holyroodhouse. It is on the wall just past the doorway to your right.

Holyrood

5 DAVID ROBERTS (1796–1864) Ruins of the Abbey of Holyrood, dated 1823 RCIN 919572

On the very first day of her first stay at the Palace of Holyroodhouse in August 1850 Victoria was eager to explore Holyrood Abbey. Later, she wrote in her diary:

‘We wandered out … to look at the old ruined Chapel, which adjoins the Palace, and I can see from my window. It is very beautiful inside. One of the aisles is still roofed in, but the rest is not. It was originally an Abbey, and many of the old tombstones, are those of former Friars. Afterwards it became the Chapel Royal … Every step is full of historical recollections.’

The charming ruins perfectly matched the Scotland in her imagination. As a little girl her ideas of what Scotland was like came from the writings of her favourite author, Sir Walter Scott.

2021 is the 250th anniversary of Sir Walter Scott’s birth on 15 August 1771. In the early 19th century he was probably the most famous novelist in the world. He wrote poems and novels

mostly based in Scotland, exploring Scottish history and landscapes, stories and traditions. When she was reading Scott, Victoria felt that she had escaped from the restrictions of her life in the royal court.

She was swept away by the romance of Scotland that Scott portrayed in his works. His Scotland was a place with age-old traditions. It was windswept and its landscape wild. It was a country unspoiled by modern life which belonged to a romantic past. Victoria wrote in her diary:

‘Oh! Walter Scott is my beau ideal of a poet, I do so admire him, both in poetry and prose.’

Victoria was thinking of his poem, ‘The Lay of the Last Minstrel’, when visited the ruins of Melrose Abbey in the Scottish Borders. Like Holyrood Abbey, it was founded by King David I. Later on she wrote in her diary about how the ghostly appearance of the romantic ruins of Melrose Abbey reminded her of the ruins in her very own Palace of Holyroodhouse.

Victoria herself painted that Abbey viewed from the Palace windows. This is one of her sketches: (QUEEN VICTORIA, Holyrood Chapel from the window of the Palace dated 30 Aug 1850, RCIN 980055.aj).

To learn more about the inside of the Palace when Victoria and Albert stayed there, find the picture by George Greig further along this wall.

501 GEORGE M. GREIG (c.1820–67) Queen Victoria’s Sitting Room or Morning Drawing-Room, Palace of Holyroodhouse, dated 1863 RCIN 919568

The subject of this watercolour, by Edinburgh artist George Greig, is a large room, with oak panelled walls hung with tapestries. It tells us about the comfort and peacefulness of Queen Victoria’s sitting room in the Palace of Holyroodhouse. The room must have been a welcome sight to Victoria and Albert when they arrived for their first stay at the Palace. They had spent a long day travelling by train from Yorkshire and stopping on the way for public engagements at Berwick and Dunbar.

If you have visited the Palace you may recognise this room as the Privy Chamber – there’s a photograph of it below:

Today the ceiling is painted white. In Greig’s painting it is a strong green which goes well with the deep red of the patterned carpet. This colour scheme was chosen by David Ramsay Hay when the room was redecorated for the royal couple’s first stay. He had also designed the interiors of Sir Walter Scott’s home, Abbotsford, in the Scottish Borders. Just like today there was a painting of a bathing scene by the Dutch artist, Jacob de Wet hanging above the fireplace – see the image below (A Bathing Scene by a River, RCIN 401237) – but when Greig was painting the scene, it had been replaced with a mirror.

Balmoral

6 WILLIAM WYLD (1806–89) The completion of the cairn on Craigowan, dated 12 Oct 1852 RCIN 919483

William Wyld’s watercolour records a day of celebration. It shows the building of a cairn – a mound of stones – to mark Victoria and Albert’s buying the Balmoral Estate. Victoria is wearing a tartan dress and red shawl and stands with Albert and five of their children, in front of the newly completed cairn. She later relived the excitement in her diary:

‘We set off with all the Children, Ladies and Gentleman, and a few of the servants … half way Mackay met us, and preceded us, playing the pipes … At the highest point of Craig Gowan all the tenants and servants, with their wives, children and old relatives were assembled.’

‘ placed a stone first, then Albert, the children each according to their ages, the Ladies and Gentlemen, and then everybody present came with a stone in their hand, which they placed. McKay played the bagpipes and whiskey was served round to all. ... At last when the cairn was completed, Albert climbed up to the top of it and placed the last stones, after which 3 cheers were given.’

In the bottom left-hand corner Wyld has written ‘One Cheer more!’. The royal couple were very impressed by the enthusiasm for life at Balmoral shown by the artist. He wrote a letter

while he was there saying how hard he was working. He also mentioned that the royal children were very interested in him and in his painting and often came to see what he was doing.

Victoria and Albert rented Balmoral for four years before they bought it. Albert saw some watercolours of Old and liked them so much that he signed the rental agreement without even visiting the property. His faith paid off. Both he and Victoria greatly enjoyed their private life at Balmoral. They loved the Aberdeenshire landscape, the towering peaks of Lochnagar. The Grampian hills reminded Albert of his German homeland. That is perhaps why, once the estate was theirs, they built the new castle with reminders of Schloss Rosenau, his childhood home. (There is a view of it later in the exhibition.)

Prince Albert recorded the building work at Balmoral in a number of photographs.

Photography

This is a photograph taken from Craigowan, the spot where the cairn in the watercolour above was built. On the left is the new castle, which is so much bigger than the old one. It was built with off-white granite from the quarry at Glen Gelder on the Balmoral Estate.

There’s a very interesting comparison here. On the other wall of the gallery there are watercolours by William Leighton Leitch, showing the building of Osborne House. They were made in the 1840s and show various stages of the construction of Victoria and Albert’s home on the Isle of Wight. Almost ten years later, however, Prince Albert decided to record the building of Balmoral through photography. In 1854 the photography firm Wilson and Hay, based in Aberdeen, were asked to visit Balmoral at three different times to take photographs of different stages of its building.

Victoria and Albert were eager promoters of photography in the 1850s, but at the same time they carried on paying artists to make watercolours. Capturing an event with photography in the 1850s was not easy. Exposure times (when people in the photograph could not move) were long and photographic equipment was large and heavy. And in the 1850s photography could not capture an occasion in colour. But as far as Victoria and Albert were concerned, watercolours and the newer medium of photography were not in competition; they valued both and collected both.

7 RICHARD PRINCIPAL LEITCH (1826-82) Crossing the Poll Tarff, 9 October 1861, c.1862–3 RCIN 919686

Here Victoria is sitting on a grey pony, at the front of a small group following two pipers wading through the chilly waters of the River Tarff, where it meets the River Tilt in the Central Highlands.

Victoria remembered the scene in her diary:

‘A few minutes brought us to the celebrated Ford of the Tarff, (Poll Tarff, it is called) which is very deep and after heavy rain almost impassable … the men were above the knees in water and suddenly in the middle, where the current, from the fine high falls, is very strong, they got in nearly up to their waists. It was quite exciting.’

Victoria and Albert were enjoying the freedom and privacy of one of their so-called ‘Great Expeditions’ which were explorations of the Highlands. Sometimes they took just a day, sometimes they stayed away from Balmoral overnight. They wanted to travel without being recognised, so they would go to an inn to spend the evening under a different name, such as Lord and Lady Churchill. This idea of travelling in secret added a lot to Victoria and Albert’s enjoyment of these expeditions.

Below is another watercolour by the same artist, Richard Principal Leitch who was the son of Victoria’s longest serving drawing teacher. It shows the humble accommodation at the Dalwhinnie Inn where the royal party had spent the previous night (The farm at Dalwhinnie, RCIN 919656).

Victoria recorded in her diary that the bed was hard and she had not had enough to eat, but she slept well. And nothing could dampen her enthusiasm for the day ahead.

She did not know that these expeditions were about to come to a sudden and tragic end. Less than ten weeks later, Albert died unexpectedly at the age of just 42. The grief-stricken Queen Victoria commissioned a number of artists, including Leitch, to capture images from the last days of her happy married life, for the last of the View Albums.

Please go to the display case in the centre of this gallery containing sketches by Queen Victoria herself.

8 People and Pets case RCINs 816796, 980024.dk

Victoria’s diary has lots of references to her sketching and drawing. It was a passion that continued into her old age. This is one of her sketchbooks with a paint palette as part of it.

Looking at what the Queen produced – what still survives – at various points in her life, it looks like she picked up her sketchbook almost every day.

The child in the red, low-shouldered dress here is three-year-old Prince Arthur. This is a style worn in the 19th century by both young boys and young girls. Victoria drew him at Osborne House a few weeks after she had given birth to his younger brother, Prince Leopold.

The subjects of her drawings were often domestic: the family, her children, the pets, and sometimes Albert. This suggests that her family life was very important to her.

One of Victoria and Albert’s first pets was Eos, Prince Albert’s greyhound. He brought Eos over from Germany, and he was the young couple’s companion after their marriage in February 1840. This picture was made later that year. It was a joint effort by Victoria and Albert.

Albert was the first to draw a portrait of Eos. This portrait is an etching made by Queen Victoria based on Prince Albert’s drawing. She has hand-coloured it using watercolour. It is a good example of their shared interests and how much they enjoyed art.

Victoria’s natural talent was encouraged and improved by drawing lessons from professional artists which started when she was just eight years old. As a young woman she was taught by Scottish landscape artist William Leighton Leitch as her Drawing Master. He continued to teach her – and other members of the royal family – for the next 22 years.

There is a story that a visiting artist, Clarkson Stanfield, came to his studio one day and spotted a drawing by lying around. He asked who had made it. William Leighton

Leitch simply said that it was one of his female pupils. In reply, not knowing at all who the identity of this pupil was, Stanfield said, ‘She paints far too well for an amateur’.

Our next painting is in the next gallery. It is a watercolour by Leitch himself, showing Victoria and Albert arriving in Scotland in 1842. Go through the doorway next to the watercolours of Osborne House and it is on the left.

Travelling the Kingdom

9 WILLIAM LEIGHTON LEITCH (1804–83) Queen Victoria landing at Granton Pier, 1844 RCIN 919577

The artist is Victoria’s drawing master, William Leighton Leitch. A brisk wind is stirring up waves in the busy harbour. In the central sailing boat there are women wearing golden bonnets and men waving their top hats. The artist uses the position of this boat to guide our eyes to where the Royal Yacht has moored, next to Granton Pier in Edinburgh. The yacht is flying the large flag of the Royal Standard.

When Victoria and Albert made their first trip to Scotland in September 1842 they travelled on the Royal Yacht from Woolwich, in , up the east coast of England to Edinburgh. Victoria loved this trip which was a new experience for her. She made lots of notes in her diary, recording even the fact that there was a cow on board to provide them with fresh milk.

But Victoria’s enjoyment was short-lived. The weather soon turned making her feel seasick and delaying their progress towards Edinburgh. Leitch captures the stormy conditions in the choppy harbour waters, but it seems he adapted the top half of his watercolour to reflect the mood of celebration. This is probably artistic licence. We can see a relatively blue sky, and the sun seems to be breaking over the castle in the far distance. In fact Victoria and Albert arrived at Granton Pier quite early in the morning. Victoria and others recorded that it was a misty day so it was not possible to see the castle or indeed very much at all.

The welcoming ceremony had been planned for the previous day, but it was now quickly put in place. The event was watched at close quarters by a new type of reporter, working for the illustrated press, which had recently started and was becoming more and more popular.

It became usual practice for these newspapers to send artists out to follow the royal couple and make sketches of the places that they were visiting. These sketches were reproduced in the papers as part of news articles reporting on royal travels and activities.

The picture below is a sketch of Victoria and Albert ready to board a boat on Loch Tay. It is an example of the new style of quickly drawn illustration which gave a new insight into the life of the royal couple to an eager and growing readership. (Victoria and Albert embarking on a boat on Loch Tay, 10 September 1842, RCIN 935239)

Germany: Prince Albert’s Homeland

10 DOUGLAS MORISON (1814–47) Schloss Rosenau, dated 1845 RCIN 920430 CARL HAAG (18201915) The terrace, c.1854–60 RCIN 917552

Victoria and Albert’s were first cousins, sharing a German grandmother. But their married life had to be firmly rooted in the country where Victoria was born and over which she ruled as

Queen. Albert adapted to its unfamiliar places and its different customs but, after five years, an opportunity came up for this situation to be reversed, for a short time at least.

Queen Victoria had always really wanted to visit Prince Albert’s German homeland. She finally had the opportunity to do so in 1845 when they travelled there together. This was a very personal trip for them. Victoria wanted to see where Albert and his brother Ernst had grown up and to meet members of their shared family. The Rosenau, (Schloss Rosenau or Rosenau Castle), was one of the country homes of the Dukes of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, just outside of Coburg.

Victoria wrote in her diary:

‘How happy, & how joyful we felt on awaking to feel ourselves here, at the dear Rosenau, my dearest Albert's birth Place – & favourite place! … if I was not what I am – this would have been my real home. But I shall always consider it my 2d home … we went upstairs … to where my dearest Albert & Ernst used to live, when they were in the Nursery … It is quite in the roof … The view is beautiful; & the paper is still full of holes – from their fencing; & the very same Table upon which they were dressed, when little, is there.’

The image below is the room she was describing.

(Schloss Rosenau: the room used by Princes Ernest and Albert as children, RCIN 920468)

Victoria and Albert spent a happy week at Rosenau with Albert’s brother Ernest and sister-in- law Alexandrine. They then travelled with them to Reinhardsbrunn, shown in Carl Haag’s watercolour below. (The Terrace, RCIN 917552)

The hunting castle of Reinhardsbrunn was built by Albert and Ernest’s father, Duke Ernest I, from the ruins of a Benedictine Abbey. Note the battlements on the bell tower and the tall spire. It is a fine example of Gothic architecture. Inside Victoria admired her late father-in-law’s taste in interior decoration. Outside, she admired the gardens and surrounding wooded hills. She may have enjoyed a party on the Reinhardsbrunn terrace like the one shown in this second watercolour by Haag. At the centre of the painting a figure in a green uniform offers a tray of drinks to Duke Ernest. He could be one of the duke’s servants, Maximilian Philipps.

As their first visit to Germany together drew to an end, Victoria wrote in her diary about the servants who had helped to make the trip so enjoyable. She mentioned in particular a ‘handsome tall man called Philips’ of African descent. He may be the figure at the centre of Haag’s watercolour – see this close-up:

Maximilian Philipps probably arrived in Coburg working with a travelling animal show, a popular entertainment at 19th century fairgrounds. Duke Ernest I – Albert and Ernest’s father – offered him a job, so Philips gave up his life on the road. He continued in the family’s service for several decades. In western art, Black servants are often not identifiable individuals. They were only included in portraits of European sitters to show the status and authority of their master. Even though we can probably identify Maximilian Philipps as the servant in this watercolour, the way he has been shown is revealing.

There are several reasons for thinking that he may have been used in order to provide an exotic element to this painting. He is placed very centrally and his outstretched leg draws the viewer’s eye. He is also the most finished figure in the watercolour and the deep green of the uniform that he’s wearing is made to look very striking. Perhaps also there is the fact that he is offering the tray of drinks to the group, which includes the Duke Ernest and the Duchess Alexandrine, is meant to indicate their superior status whilst he is just a servant.

Although the way Philipps is shown may make us ask questions about how the artist saw him, he was in fact an admired and respected servant. The lives of Black servants like Philipps can sometimes be pieced together from small scraps of evidence such as this watercolour.

France

11 GEORGE HOUSMAN THOMAS (1824–68) Napoleon III and Prince Albert in Boulogne 1854; mistakenly dated 1853 RCIN 920050

Here Albert rides along a crowded cobbled street in Boulogne under a canopy of Tricolour and Union flags. By his side is the French Emperor Napoleon III. Charles Dickens was spending his summer holiday nearby and described the growing excitement in a letter home:

‘The town looks like one immense flag, it is so decked out with streamers; as the royal yacht approached yesterday – the whole range of the cliff tops lined with troops, and the artillery, matches in hand, all ready to fire the great guns the moment she made the harbour; the sailors standing up in the prow of the yacht, the Prince in a blazing uniform, left alone on the deck for everybody to see – a stupendous silence, and then such an infernal blazing and banging as never was heard. It was almost as fine a sight as one could see under a deep-blue sky.’

This watercolour by George Housman Thomas looks like a returning victory parade, but in fact Albert and Napoleon are starting out on a visit to the French regimental camps, about three hours’ ride from the town centre.

The background to this watercolour is quite serious. It records Albert’s going to Boulogne at the request of Napoleon III to prove that there was an alliance between Britain and France in the Crimean War against Russia.

The war had started in the Crimea the year before. Disagreements in the region about access to holy sites in Palestine finally reached boiling point. There were riots in Bethlehem which was then part of the Turkish Ottoman Empire, and several Russian Orthodox monks were killed. In revenge Russia invaded Turkey. Within months France, followed by Britain, had joined the war.

When Albert travelled to Boulogne in September 1854 Victoria wrote in her diary that she was actually rather cross about being left behind. This watercolour is one of three that Prince Albert commissioned from George Housman Thomas showing episodes of his stay in France. He gave them to Queen Victoria for Christmas that year. Perhaps they were in some way an apology for the fact that he was able to go to Boulogne but she was not able to be with him.

France

12 JEAN-BAPTISTE-FORTUNÉ DE FOURNIER (1798–1864) Queen Victoria's drawing room at Saint-Cloud Aug, 1855 RCIN 920064 EUGENE-LOUIS LAMI (1800–90) The supper in the Salle de Spectacle, Versailles, 25 August 1855, 1855 RCIN 920097

Napoleon III and Empress Eugènie stayed at Windsor Castle in the spring of 1855. Victoria and Albert made a return visit, staying at the Château of Saint-Cloud, five kilometres west of . To honour their historic and official visit, the Emperor and Empress gave up their own rooms for their use. The rooms were redecorated for their visit. Jean-Baptiste-Fortuné de Fournier’s watercolour of the drawing room shows how the ceiling was painted to represent the sky. The elegant furnishings and paintings were brought specially from the Louvre.

In the painting it is just possible to see the top of Albert’s head. He is reading a French newspaper dated 19th August 1855. Victoria is wearing a pink dress. She seems to be looking at a book of prints and the book is open at a picture of her host, Napoleon III.

The story goes that Empress Eugènie burst into tears when she saw the refurbished rooms at the Château of Saint-Cloud. She thought they were nowhere near as beautiful as the rooms she and her husband had stayed in at Windsor. But Victoria and Albert were charmed by everything on their ten-day visit. They were very impressed by the ball at Versailles, with an elaborate supper in the Salle de Spectacle, pictured in this watercolour by Eugène-Louis Lami. The original is hanging nearby.

Queen Victoria wrote in her diary: ‘we went through … to the theatre, where supper was served. The sight was truly magnificent … all by the Empress’s own direction & arrangement. The whole was beautifully lit up with endless Chandeliers, & there were many garlands of flowers.’

In Lami’s watercolour the two couples are sitting in the royal box towards the back of the room in the centre. The same box was used by Marie Antoinette in the 18th century. Underneath there is a green banner and with the gold imperial eagle over the top of it.

The artists in this exhibition included a lot of detail in their works. Because of the work of great artists like JMW Turner we often to connect watercolour paintings with landscape, with light and shade and rain and wind. But watercolour is very flexible. The watercolours in this exhibition show that skilful artists could use watercolour in a whole range of different ways. By the mid-19th century artists had developed ways of working with watercolours that put them on the same level as painters using oils.

Watercolours could be used to paint the detail of a subject. When used with a fine pencil and a ruler and a good eye for perspective a painter could use a watercolour to show an inside room as accurately as an architectural drawing. Painting human figures in a landscape made it possible to record a scene or a particular moment in a way that we nowadays we record with photography.

People often think that watercolours are made simply, with washes of colour and broad, flowing brushstrokes. But in this exhibition some of the artists use a different technique. Many of the watercolours have involved a lot of work, as the artist sketches out the composition then builds it up with layers of colour. They often use a type of paint which covers up what is below, to pick out details and make them really shine and sparkle. This is ‘body colour’ - watercolour made so it cannot been seen through by adding a white pigment to it (such as lead carbonate or zinc oxide). In Lami’s picture of the dinner at Versailles he uses it to highlight the sashes and red jackets of the men’s military uniforms. The white pigment make the women’s jewellery and the chandeliers sparkle.

13 The Moonlight Lesson – Landscape RCINs 919719, 919718.a, 919720

Victoria took up her sketchbook whenever her busy schedule of engagements and the demands of her large family allowed – she was keen to improve her watercolour technique. In this letter William Leighton Leitch, her drawing master for over 22 years, gives detailed instructions about the stages of building up a picture of a ruined castle by moonlight. This was just the sort of romantic scene which his royal pupil would love. By looking in turn at each of Leitch’s three small sketches of the same scene, displayed here, you can follow the progression of this Moonlight Lesson:

‘No 1- After the outline is done – wash the Whole over with yellow ochre – let the work dry then – go over the region of the Castle with yellow ochre and a little cobalt and light red added – let that likewise dry and go over the foreground with burnt sienna and French blue added.

No 2- Begin with putting in the sky Cobalt with a little indigo mixed – laid on with a light touch – liquid and smoothly leaving the forms of the clouds as freely as possible – then the fresh/first tint of clouds with the same tint of sky – with a good touch of yellow ochre added to it – kept liquid and pure and bring the tint all over the region of the Castle – leaving the outline of Cottages strong and clear – the shadows of the same cottages – made with French blue. Burnt umber and a little lake – mixed to a

neutral tint – varied with one or other of the said colours according to circumstances as the subjects come forward or return.

No 3- Put in the Castle first – with a tint of Cobalt and Burnt umber with a slight tinge of lake (purple or crimson) – the distances retreating from the Castle – with the same tints with more Cobalt as they mix with the sky.

The lights on the cottages with yellow ochre light red and cobalt. The tree next the moon – with French blue burnt umber and the slightest tinge of purple lake – the other tree which is much deeper within is made with Brown pink purple lake and indigo – the shadows on figures done with the same dark colours.’

14 WILLIAM SIMPSON (1823–99) Queen Victoria reviewing the Royal Artillery at Woolwich on their return from the Crimea, 13 March 1856, dated March 1856 RCIN 916787

Here is another extract from Queen Victoria’s diary, describing the scene in this watercolour by William Simpson:

‘This was the first return of any portion of our triumphant Troops, in any number, from the Crimea, excepting invalids. … I cannot describe the emotion Albert and I felt, as toil worn, very sunburnt men, advanced in splendid order. They had all long beards and were heavily laden with large knapsacks … such fine tall, strong men, some strikingly handsome, – all with such a proud, noble, soldier-like bearing … The whole sight gave one a real idea of what the life and appearance of the men, on service out there, must have been.’

The picture records the return of the Royal Artillery to Woolwich towards the end of the Crimean War. William Simpson uses deep colours, with lots of pigment, for the uniforms of the soldiers at the front of the procession. By fading out the colour over the following rows of marching men, he gives the impression of troops stretching as far as the eye can see.

Victoria and Albert had kept themselves fully informed about events and conditions in the Crimea all through the war. They sent supplies of blankets, soap and books to the battlefield, and visited the wounded in military hospitals. Not long after the war ended, they invited Florence Nightingale to Balmoral to hear her first-hand account of the front. At all times Victoria and Albert tried hard to keep the suffering of the soldiers – rather than themselves – front and centre in the public’s mind.

The watercolour nearby shows a troop of soldiers on their way to get on a ship which will take them to the Crimea. They are showing their loyalty by happily waving their bearskins towards the royal family standing on the balcony at . Victoria and Albert are tiny figures in comparison with the soldiers who are obviously the main subject in this painting.

Our tour continues back in the first gallery. Go through the doorway to your left and walk past the pictures of Balmoral to the watercolours showing the grandeur of state occasions and the wonders of the .

Great Exhibition

15 JOSEPH NASH (1809–78) The Great Exhibition: The Exterior, dated 1851 RCIN 919931

From May to October in 1851 more than six million people flocked to London’s Hyde Park to marvel at The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations. The exhibition was housed in a huge structure made of iron girders and nearly 300,000 panes of glass, as can be seen at the right-hand side of this watercolour by Joseph Nash. We get a feeling of how large the Crystal Palace is from by the trees in the background, the stone obelisk in the centre of the painting and the figures inspecting a display of building materials and samples of coal.

After she visited The Great Exhibition for the second time, the author Charlotte Brontë wrote to her father:

‘Its grandeur does not consist in one thing, but in the unique assemblage of all things – whatever human industry has created – you find there. It seems as if only magic could have gathered this mass of wealth from all the ends of the earth.’

Albert had a very clear idea that the exhibition should demonstrate progress, showing how science could be used to support industry to improve the lives of people all around the world.

The watercolours on this wall tell us about the variety of the 100,000 exhibits: multi-coloured stained glass; a golden seat and canopy – called a howdah – perched on the back of a stuffed elephant; steel fire grates and fenders from Sheffield; and giant machinery and engines. The exhibits from the home nations included about 500 from Scotland, including machines making steam and gas, textiles from Inverness, wool from Shetland, and curling stones!

Albert was at the heart of the huge organisational effort needed to put on the Great Exhibition. When that was achieved he turned his attention to making sure that it would never be forgotten.

He commissioned a sequence of 49 watercolours by Joseph Nash and Louis Haghe, and some of them can be seen here. The watercolours were then reproduced as chromolithographs – in colour – using a new method of colour printing that Albert promoted. These 49 watercolours were printed and sold alongside the catalogue of the exhibition to give visitors a permanent record of the Great Exhibition – something to refer to for years to come.

Nash’s picture of The Exterior of The Great Exhibition is a good example of how preparing works for an exhibition can reveal information about them which was not previously known. When looking at this work Puneeta Sharma, a Conservator at Royal Collection Trust, noticed something unusual about it. It was heavier than she expected and had a stiffer ‘primary support’, which is what conservators call the paper used for a painting like this. A stiffer primary support could mean either that there is another sheet attached or that it is made up of layers of sheets stuck together, like cardboard.

A light placed directly behind Nash’s watercolour revealed a second piece of paper stuck on the back of it. Along the left and right edges of this additional sheet – in the image below – Puneeta could make out the faint lines of two tall buildings.

For some reason, the artist has stuck these sheets together. Maybe in his mind this is not a finished work of art and he has abandoned this drawing. Perhaps he decided that the paper felt thin and he needed stick something on the back to give it more support. It is not possible to know for sure what the artist was thinking but further examination may reveal what the drawing actually depicted, along with the materials that he used to make it. This will give more information about how he worked as an artist.

16 GABRIELE MARIANO NICOLAI CARELLI (1821–1900) The interior of the Royal Mausoleum, , dated 1880 RCIN 919746

Albert died unexpectedly at Windsor Castle on 14 December 1861. Reports said that he died of typhoid fever. Victoria was consumed by grief. She directed her artistic energies into making sculptures and statues to remember him by. It was as if she was trying to bring back the man who’d been by her side for more than 20 years.

This work by Carelli is of Prince Albert’s sarcophagus – a coffin made of stone. It was commissioned by Queen Victoria and made by the sculptor, Carlo Marochetti. It feels quite sad that Queen Victoria commissioned her own sarcophagus at the same time. She wanted it to represent her at the same stage in life as her beloved husband when he died.

Watercolours, like this one by Gabriele Carelli, no longer recorded the lives of two people who did so much together. Rather, they presented scenes of two frozen figures set apart. Victoria becomes an observer of events rather than someone closely involved in them. She often appears as a shadowy figure in black. She is depicted dwarfed by the scale of her grief and the towering representations of her dead husband.

Victoria’s memorials to Albert were magnificent and stately but they were also grey and lifeless. In time, Victoria found comfort in the View Albums of watercolours they had collected together. The vivid, colourful pictures they contained (including those you’ve seen today) took her back in time to relive the sights and sounds of so many happy scenes – private and public – from ‘our lives in watercolour’.

We’ve now reached the end of our tour. We hope you’ve enjoyed the exhibition. This script has been compiled from a tour produced by ATS with information from the following experts from Royal Collection Trust: Carly Collier, Martin Clayton, Puneeta Sharma and Lucy Wood.

When you leave the exhibition you might like to visit the Palace of Holyroodhouse – if you haven’t already – or the Palace café and shop, which are both in a courtyard just beyond the Forecourt. You could also visit the Physic Garden, which is free to enter and is just behind Abbey Strand.

The Royal Collection is managed by a charitable trust, and all revenue from tickets purchased for The Queen’s Gallery or the Palace goes towards the care, conservation and presentation of the Collection.

To find out more, please visit our website at rct.uk. There you can find out more about future exhibitions. You can keep in touch by signing up to our e-Newsletter or by following us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Please remember that you can return to The Queen’s Gallery, free of charge, for a year, by converting your ticket into a 1-Year Pass. Just sign the back and ask a member of staff to stamp it before you leave.

Thank you for visiting.

The Royal Collection

The Royal Collection is one of the largest and most important art collections in the world, and one of the last great European royal collections to remain intact. It includes almost all types of fine and decorative arts, and is spread among some 13 royal residences and former residences across the UK, most of them regularly open to the public. The Royal Collection is held in trust by the Sovereign for her successors and the nation, and is not owned by The Queen as a private individual.

To find out more about Royal Collection Trust and to keep up to date with future exhibitions, events, publications and the latest arrivals in our shops, please subscribe to our e-Newsletter at www.rct.uk/about/royal-collection-trust/keep-in-touch.