Royal Collection Trust – IMS Photography

Ernest II, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (1818-1893) at the Eckernförde, 5th April 1849

Ian Malpass-Scott — Tue, 11 Jun 2024 18:29:00 +0000

Feodor Dietz (1813-70) studied at Munich, and first exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1838. He became painter to the court of Baden in 1839. In 1862 he was appointed professor at the Academy in Karlsruhe, but at the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war he gave up his post to join the ambulance services at the front, and during the campaign he died at Gray in eastern France. He is esteemed as a leading battle painter of the German school.

Duke Ernest II of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (1818-1893) was Queen Victoria’s brother-in-law. The profession of arms held little attraction for him, but he did lead his troops into action on one occasion during the First Schleswig War which lasted from 1848 to 1851. Battles took place in southern Denmark and northern Germany, rooted in the Schleswig-Holstein Question which contested the issue of who should control the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein. At Eckernförde, on 5th April 1849, the Duke directed the defence of this harbour on the Baltic, as Danish warships came in and attacked. A report in the Illustrated London News of April 14th gave “due praise to the courage of the Danish sailors, and no less to the German commander, the Duke of Saxe Coburg Gotha for his judicious arrangements and the humanity and zeal which he displayed in his attempts to save the crew of the ‘Christian VIII'”.

The Duke appears full-length, mounted on a prancing white charger riding to the right on a steep slope with the smoke of battle thick on his left and infantry advancing on the right; behind him is a mounted officer and in the distance warships bombard the coast.

A pendant to this painting is in Schloss Ehrenburg, Coburg.

Provenance: Given to the Prince Consort by the Saxe-Coburg & Gotha in 1850; recorded in the Prince Consort’s Library at Buckingham Palace in 1876

Text from Royal Collection Trust website

Object description
Type: Easel painting
Location: Osborne House, Isle of Wight
Material: Oil on canvas
Artist: Feodor Dietz (1813-70)
Date: 1850

Image Details
Date: 11 June 2024
Camera body: iPhone Xs
Lens: Wide Camera 26mm ƒ/1.8
Focal Length: 26mm
Aperture: ƒ/1.8
Shutter Speed: 1/25s
ISO: 400
Licensing: Image of a Royal Collection Trust asset. This image cannot be licensed.

Highland Cattle in the Pass of Leny

Ian Malpass-Scott — Tue, 11 Jun 2024 18:29:00 +0000

The painting shows a herd of Highland cattle in the Pass of Levy which is about three miles north of Callender on the road to Lochearnhead in Scotland. The painting is stated to record a scene which had attracted Queen Victoria when she had driven through the Pass with Prince Albert. On a later occasion when she went through the Pass she noted that she had seen ‘endless droves of wild-looking, and for the most part extremely small, shaggy Highland cattle with their drovers and dogs – most wild and picturesque’. There is a preliminary sketch for the two calves in the foreground (RCIN 404116). Signed and dated: Gourlay Steell. RSA 1876.

Provenance: Painted for Queen Victoria.

Text from Royal Collection Trust website

Object description
Type: Easel painting
Location: Osborne House, Isle of Wight
Material: Oil on canvas
Artist: Gourlay Steell (1819-94)
Date: 1876

Image Details
Date: 11 June 2024
Camera body: iPhone Xs
Lens: Wide Camera 26mm ƒ/1.8
Focal Length: 26mm
Aperture: ƒ/1.8
Shutter Speed: 1/25s
ISO: 500
Licensing: Image of a Royal Collection Trust asset. This image cannot be licensed.

“Noble” (1871-1887)

Ian Malpass-Scott — Tue, 11 Jun 2024 18:29:00 +0000

A black and tan Border Collie, standing in a mountainous Highland landscape with sheep and a loch in the distance. In the foreground is a rug of Balmoral tartan and a sketchbook and painting equipment belonging to the Queen.

Queen Victoria owned a number of collies who were called Noble. The dog in this painting is the most famous of them all, Noble IV (1871-87), who had been given to the Queen by Lady Charles Innes-Kerr, daughter-in-law of the Duchess of Roxburghe, in 1872. He died at Balmoral on 18 September 1887: ‘my darling old Noble… a grevious loss to me of a real friend’.

When Queen Victoria saw this picture on 3 March 1875 she thought it ‘excellent’. Barber was paid £55 for the picture on 12 May 1875. It was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1875 and placed at Osborne.

Provenance: Painted for Queen Victoria.

Text from Royal Collection Trust website

Object description
Type: Easel painting
Location: Osborne House, Isle of Wight
Material: Oil on canvas
Artist: Charles Burton Barber (1845-94)
Date: 1875

Queen Victoria (1819-1901)

Ian Malpass-Scott — Tue, 11 Jun 2024 18:29:00 +0000

This is an actual size copy of Winterhalter’s portrait of 1841 (RCIN 401412) and a pair to RCIN 406226. Both were produced at the Sèvres manufactory.

The Queen is shown three-quarter-length, facing three-quarters to the left, her arms folded before her, wearing a white evening gown with the riband and star of the Order of the Garter.

Signed: Adel. Ducluzeau (1846). / d’après / Winterhalter.

Provenance: First recorded at Osborne House in 1851

Text from Royal Collection Trust website

Object description
Type: Easel painting
Location: Osborne House, Isle of Wight
Material: Enamel on porcelain
Artist: Marie Adelaide Ducluzeau (1787-1849)
Date: 1851

Cardinal Wolsey at the Gate of Leicester Abbey

Ian Malpass-Scott — Tue, 11 Jun 2024 18:29:00 +0000

Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, Archbishop of York and Lord Chancellor of England, was for a time the most powerful man in England, second only to the King, Henry VIII. Wolsey fell from favour in 1529 and went north to visit his Archdiocese of York. A year later he was accused of high treason and ordered to return to London. On the way, he stopped at Leicester Abbey. He was so sick that he couldn’t ride the mule, seen here behind him. He is greeted by the abbot and his monks on the steps of the abbey. Wolsey died at the abbey on 29 November 1530.

Prince Albert, accompanied by Prince Waldemar of Prussia, visited Cope to see his picture in the making. He was, according to a contemporary account, ‘much pleased and complimentary, and stayed nearly an hour.’ The painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1848. Before the exhibition Cope ‘greyed’ the shadows on the carpet, deepened the shadows on the cardinal and got the painter Sir Edwin Landseer to work on the mule’s head for him.

Signed and dated: C W Cope 1847.

Provenance: Painted for Prince Albert

Text from Royal Collection Trust website

Object description
Type: Easel painting
Location: Osborne House, Isle of Wight
Material: Oil on canvas
Artist: Charles West Cope (1811-90)
Date: 1847

Image Details
Date: 11 June 2024
Camera body: iPhone Xs
Lens: Wide Camera 26mm ƒ/1.8
Focal Length: 26mm
Aperture: ƒ/1.8
Shutter Speed: 1/30s
ISO: 640
Licensing: Image of a Royal Collection Trust asset. This image cannot be licensed.

A Scene from Goethe’s “Götz von Berlichingen”

Ian Malpass-Scott — Tue, 11 Jun 2024 18:29:00 +0000

Goetz von Berlichingen was a successful drama written in 1773 by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, based on the memoirs of the sixteenth-century knight and adventurer-poet, Goetz von Berlichingen. The scene depicted here is taken from Act IV, scene iii of Goethe’s play when the hero is summoned to attend the Imperial Commissioners in the Council House at Heilbronn. When the magistrate, standing on the left, rings a bell, a party of armed men appears. Goetz, however, strikes one of them down and snatches a sword from another. The painting is stated to have been painted in Brussels, where Prince Albert and his brother stayed for 10 months, 1836-7, and to have been given by Prince Albert to the Queen of the Belgians. Signed and dated: Albrxt. / 1837. Inscribed on the back with the title and dates.

Provenance: Painted by Prince Albert at Brussels in 1836; given to the Queen of the Belgians in 1850; bequeathed by her to Queen Victoria (Queen Victoria’s acquisitions 1851); recorded in the Queen’s Dressing Room at Buckingham Palace in 1876

Text from Royal Collection Trust website

Object description
Type: Easel painting
Location: Osborne House, Isle of Wight
Material: Oil on canvas
Artist: Prince Albert, Prince Consort (1819-61)
Date: 1836

Image Details
Date: 11 June 2024
Camera body: iPhone Xs
Lens: Wide Camera 26mm ƒ/1.8
Focal Length: 26mm
Aperture: ƒ/1.8
Shutter Speed: 1/15s
ISO: 800
Licensing: Image of a Royal Collection Trust asset. This image cannot be licensed.

The Madonna and Child

Ian Malpass-Scott — Tue, 11 Jun 2024 18:29:00 +0000

The influence of Raphael is clearly evident in this painting, which bears a similarity to works such as The Small Cowper Madonna (Washington, DC, National Gallery of Art). The resemblance was noted by Queen Victoria who described the painting on first seeing it in Buckingham Palace as ‘quite like an old master, & in the style of Raphael – so chaste & exquisitely painted’ (Journal, 9 August, 1845).

While the pose here is tender, the focus is more on religious devotion than maternal affection, the spiritual rather than the sensual. The Virgin reads a Bible passage referring to the stock of Jesse (Isaiah 11) and the child points to Mary as the origin of Christ. The picture was hung in the Queen’s Bedroom at Osborne House. The Queen herself made a pastel copy of it (RCIN 980142), and in 1846 the Prince commissioned from Dyce a companion picture, St Joseph(RCIN 403746), which he considered even finer.

The Scottish artist William Dyce was frequently considered, by both his contemporaries and later generations, to epitomise the Nazarene style of painting in England. While he did make several trips to Rome and probably met members of the Nazarene group working there during the 1820s Dyce’s style is more illusionistic and sculptural than the flat style championed by the Nazarenes and he himself consistently denied any link with the group. The Nazarenes were fascinated by the technique of fresco, an interest also cultivated by Dyce. His colossal Neptune resigning the Empire of the Seas to Britannia, painted on the upper wall of the stairwell at Osborne House, was commissioned by Prince Albert in 1846 and completed in 1847.

Dyce was involved in religious revivalism in England, and, like Prince Albert, emphasised the importance of the public role of art in society, for example designing the certificates for exhibitors at the Great Exhibition of 1851. Working at the Government School of Design at Somerset House, he was involved in the design of the lace for Queen Victoria’s wedding dress (Staniland and Levey, 1983, pp. 28-30). Prince Albert and the artist also shared an interest in early music – the Prince having been appointed a director of the Concerts of Antient Music in 1840 and Dyce having founded the Motett Society in 1844.

Text adapted from ‘Victoria and Albert: Art & Love’, London, 2010

Provenance: Purchased by Prince Albert, 1845

Text from Royal Collection Trust website

Object description
Type: Easel painting
Location: Osborne House, Isle of Wight
Material: Oil on canvas
Artist: William Dyce (1806-64)
Date: 1845

Image Details
Date: 11 June 2024
Camera body: iPhone Xs
Lens: Wide Camera 26mm ƒ/1.8
Focal Length: 26mm
Aperture: ƒ/1.8
Shutter Speed: 1/16s
ISO: 1600
Licensing: Image of a Royal Collection Trust asset. This image cannot be licensed.

The Grandmother’s Birthday

Ian Malpass-Scott — Tue, 11 Jun 2024 18:29:00 +0000

In its tender depiction of three generations this painting encapsulates the joys of family life, a theme particularly important to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. In June 1858 following the birth of Crown Prince Wilhelm (later Kaiser Wilhelm II) to the 18-year-old Princess Royal, Queen Victoria wrote excitedly to her eldest daughter: ‘I delight in the idea of being a grandmama; to be that at 39 and to look and feel young is great fun…I think of my next birthday being spent with my children and a grandchild. It will be a treat!’ (Hibbert 1984, p.106).

By the time he painted The Grandmother’s Birthday Ferdinand Waldmüller was already a well established artist, having first exhibited at the Vienna Academy in 1822. With little formal training, he taught himself by copying Italian and Dutch old master paintings in Vienna and in Italy, where he made twenty separate visits. In this example the composition, with its pyramidal arrangement of figures, has affinities with several of Raphael’s depictions of the Holy Family, while the naturalistic depiction of the faces and careful observation of the interior recollects an interest in seventeenth-century Dutch masters. An exhibition of Waldmüller’s works in the Gewerbeverein at Vienna in 1856 apparently so caught the eye of the British ambassador, Sir George Hamilton Seymour, that he arranged for the artist to travel to London, and for a private showing of his pictures at Buckingham Palace (Werner, 1971, p. 369). While Prince Albert bought The Grandmother’s Birthday for the Queen, she in turn bought another picture, The Interruption (or The Surprise) as a Christmas present for the Prince.

Waldmüller painted quickly and left behind over a thousand paintings, the majority of which are now in private collections. He worked in a variety of genres, including portraiture, landscapes and miniatures. He was appointed Professor at the Vienna Academy, where his radical writings on art and his teaching methods – which promoted the progressive style of realism in painting over the more traditional, ideal manner – aroused hostility from the art establishment.

Signed and dated: Waldmüller 1856

Text adapted from Victoria and Albert: Art & Love, London, 2010

Provenance: Purchased by Prince Albert (payment dated 24 June 1856, £63, PA Ledgers)

Given to Queen Victoria by Prince Albert on her birthday, 24th May 1857. [Victoria & Albert: Art & Love, London, 2010, pg 459]

Text from Royal Collection Trust website

Object description
Type: Easel painting
Location: Osborne House, Isle of Wight
Material: Oil on canvas
Artist: Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller (1793-1865)
Date: 1856

Image Details
Date: 11 June 2024
Camera body: iPhone Xs
Lens: Wide Camera 26mm ƒ/1.8
Focal Length: 26mm
Aperture: ƒ/1.8
Shutter Speed: 1/24s
ISO: 800
Licensing: Image of a Royal Collection Trust asset. This image cannot be licensed.

Laocoön

Ian Malpass-Scott — Tue, 11 Jun 2024 18:29:00 +0000

A reduced bronze version of the Laocoon, one of the most celebrated marbles from Roman antiquity, discovered near the church of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, on 14th January 1506. It was bought by Pope Julius II and placed in the Belvedere. The marble was widely reproduced from the Renaissance. It depicts Laocoon and his two sons engaged in a desperate fight with snakes, sent by the goddess Minerva to kill them. This version of the Laocoon was made by Ferdinand Barbedienne whose workshop in Paris specialised in the production of bronze reductions of Antique, Renaissance and Baroque sculpture.

Provenance: Given to Prince Albert by Queen Victoria on his birthday, 26th August 1854 [Victoria & Albert: Art & Love, London, 2010, pg 460]

Text from Royal Collection Trust website

Object description
Type: Sculpture
Location: Osborne House, Isle of Wight
Material: Bronze
Artist: Ferdinand Barbedienne (1810-92)
Date: 1854

Image Details
Date: 11 June 2024
Camera body: Nikon D50
Lens: Nikkor AF-S DX 18-55mm ƒ3.5-5.6G ED
Focal Length: 18mm
Aperture: ƒ/3.5
Shutter Speed: 1/50s
ISO: 800
Licensing: Image of a Royal Collection Trust asset. This image cannot be licensed.

Prince Albert (1819-1861)

Ian Malpass-Scott — Tue, 11 Jun 2024 18:29:00 +0000

Full-length white marble statue, standing, wearing antique armour above the knees; holding a circular shield depicting St George and the dragon in his right hand on the ground, his left hand on his sword; his cuirass depicts a winged victory.

Provenance: Commissioned by Prince Albert as a present for Queen Victoria’s birthday, May 24th 1842; completed in 1844

[Victoria & Albert: Art & Love, London, 2010, pg 456]

Text from Royal Collection Trust website

Object description
Type: Sculpture
Location: Osborne House, Isle of Wight
Material: Marble
Artist: Emil Wolff (1802-79)
Date: 1844

Image Details
Date: 11 June 2024
Camera body: Nikon D50
Lens: Nikkor AF-S DX 18-55mm ƒ3.5-5.6G ED
Focal Length: 18mm
Aperture: ƒ/3.5
Shutter Speed: 1/80s
ISO: 800
Licensing: Image of a Royal Collection Trust asset. This image cannot be licensed.