THE QUEEN'S GALLERY PALACE OF HOLYROODHOUSE - Victoria and Albert: Our Lives in Watercolour

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 FRANZ XAVER WINTERHALTER
      Queen Victoria, 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 Queen Victoria 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 Christmas tree at Windsor Castle, 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 Royal Collection. 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, Osborne House, dated 1852
      RCIN 923463

In the early years after she became queen and then when she got married, Victoria enjoyed
holidays in Brighton 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 Robert Peel suggested to Albert that he visit
Osborne House on the Isle of Wight. 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 Balmoral Castle 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 the young Victoria 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 London, 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 Paris.
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 Buckingham Palace. 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.

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, Frogmore, 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
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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.

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