{"id":732,"date":"2014-04-19T10:47:10","date_gmt":"2014-04-19T10:47:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/royalty-magazine.com\/wpcoco\/?p=732"},"modified":"2014-05-19T14:19:35","modified_gmt":"2014-05-19T14:19:35","slug":"732","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/royalty-magazine.com\/wpcoco\/royal-history-and-heritage\/732\/","title":{"rendered":"Victoria & Albert: Art & Love"},"content":{"rendered":"

A revealing new exhibition, \u2018Victoria & Albert: Art & Love\u2019 focuses on the connection between art and romance, a medium through which Queen Victoria and Prince Albert expressed their intense love for each other. It is the first exhibition ever to focus on Victoria and Albert\u2019s shared enthusiasm for art. Bringing together more than 400 items from the Royal Collection, it celebrates the royal couple\u2019s mutual delight in collecting and displaying works of art, from the time of their engagement in 1839 to the Prince\u2019s untimely death in 1861. The exhibition also challenges the popular image of Victoria – the melancholy widow of 40 years – and reveals her as a passionate and open-minded young woman. For Victoria and Albert, art was an important part of everyday life and a way they expressed their love for each other. Around a third of the objects in the exhibition were exchanged as gifts between the couple to mark special occasions. They range from the simple and sentimental, such as a set of jewellery in the form of orange blossom, to superb examples of early Italian painting, including Bernardo Daddi\u2019s \u2018The Marriage of the Virgin\u2019 and Perugino\u2019s \u2018Saint Jerome in Penitence\u2019, both given by the Queen to the Prince for his birthday in 1846. Prince Albert\u2019s taste was influenced by his German ancestry and his experience as a student in Florence and Rome. He led a revival of interest in early German and Italian painting at a time when \u2018the Primitives\u2019 were largely ignored. Among his acquisitions were Duccio\u2019s \u2018Triptych\u2019, the first acknowledged work by the artist to enter an English collection, and \u2018Apollo and Diana\u2019 by Lucas Cranach. Albert was also interested in how paintings were displayed and several of the pictures in the exhibition are shown in the frames he commissioned for them. The Queen\u2019s tastes were more mainstream than those of her husband. She appreciated the narrative qualities of pictures such as \u2018Ramsgate Sands: \u2018Life at the Seaside\u2019 by William Powell Frith. Her fondness for portraiture is shown through paintings and drawings of her family, and her own sketches of her children.<\/p>\n

The royal couple were regular visitors to the annual Royal Academy exhibition and frequently made purchases. In 1855 Victoria bought Cimabue\u2019s \u2018Madonna Carried in Procession\u2019 by Frederic Leighton, the first work by the artist to be shown at the Academy. Other paintings, such as John Martin\u2019s \u2018The Eve of the Deluge\u2019, were acquired during visits to artists\u2019 studios, while George Cruikshank\u2019s \u2018The Disturber Detected\u2019 was bought in an unfinished state when it was sent on approval to Buckingham Palace. Prince Albert\u2019s profound admiration for the work of Raphael and the \u2018Raphaelesque\u2019 in contemporary art can be seen in \u2018The Madonna and Child\u2019 by William Dyce and the drawing \u2018Religion Glorified by the Fine Arts\u2019 by Johann Friedrich Overbeck. The artist Edwin Landseer\u2019s skillful depiction of animals greatly appealed to Victoria and Albert, who surrounded themselves with a large assortment of pets. In Landseer\u2019s charming portrait of \u2018Eos\u2019, Prince Albert\u2019s favourite greyhound, the dog stands poised and alert, guarding her master\u2019s possessions. The German painter Franz Xaver Winterhalter received by far the greatest number of royal commissions. Over two decades of patronage he produced numerous formal portraits, such as \u2018The Royal Family in 1846\u2019 (described as \u2018sensual and fleshy\u2019 by one contemporary critic) and \u2018The First of May 1851\u2019. He was also entrusted with more private work. In 1843 Victoria commissioned \u2018the secret picture\u2019 from Winterhalter as a surprise for her husband\u2019s twenty-fourth birthday. The artist presents the Queen in an intimate pose, leaning against a red cushion with her hair half unravelled from its fashionable knot. Victoria and Albert were important patrons and collectors of the new art of photography and lent their support to the Photographic Society, which was established in 1853. They commissioned hundreds of photographs of their family, friends and household, and used the medium to record places they had visited together – a counterpart to their Souvenir Albums of watercolours and drawings. The exhibition includes work by the photographers Roger Fenton, William Edward Kilburn, Francis Bedford, William Bambridge, Gustave le Gray and the Comte de Montizon. ueen Victoria was the first monarch to live at Buckingham Palace. Under the direction of the Prince\u2019s artistic adviser, Ludwig Gruner, the Palace\u2019s State Rooms were expanded and decorated in colourful neo-Renaissance style. In the new Ballroom, Victoria and Albert enjoyed private performances of favourite operas and hosted costumed balls. Guests were encouraged to commission elaborate fancy dress in support of the declining Spitalfields silk industry.\u00a0The exhibition includes the most sumptuous of Queen Victoria\u2019s surviving dresses, designed by Eug\u00e8ne Lami for the 1851 \u2018Stuart Ball\u2019.<\/p>\n

\"Art&Love3\"
\u2018The Royal Family in 1846\u2019 by Franz Xaver Winterhalter. In this well-known picture Queen Victoria is depicted as both sovereign and mother. The scene is one of domestic harmony, albeit with the symbols of monarchy prominently displayed. The painting was hung in the Dining Room at Osborne House.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Music played an important part in Victoria and Albert\u2019s life. The day after her proposal to Albert, the Queen wrote in her Journal, \u201c\u2026 he sang to me some of his own compositions, which are beautiful, & he has a very fine voice. I also sang to him.\u201d The couple were accomplished musicians and played four-handed arrangements of orchestral and operatic work. A beautifully decorated Erard piano, commissioned by Queen Victoria in 1856, is shown in the exhibition. They particularly admired the work of the composer Felix Mendelssohn, who visited the Palace on several occasions. Shortly before his death in 1847, the composer presented Prince Albert with the manuscript of \u2018Song Without Words as a Piano Duet\u2019. Albert also composed music from an early age. The exhibition includes his song with piano accompaniment, \u2018Dem Fernen\u2019 (To the Distant One), annotated by Victoria: \u2018Composed by dear Albert at Windsor Castle & sent to me by him Jan. 5. 1840.\u2019<\/p>\n

In 1845 Queen Victoria purchased Osborne House on the Isle of Wight as a private family retreat from London. Osborne\u2019s views of the Solent reminded Prince Albert of the Bay of Naples and inspired his plans to replace the existing house with an Italianate villa. The new building, the result of the close collaboration between Albert and the architect Thomas Cubitt, was designed to display art, particularly Victoria and Albert\u2019s unrivalled collection of contemporary sculpture. The royal couple commissioned a large number of pieces from young sculptors working in the classical style, among them William Gibson, Emil Wolff, Richard James Wyatt and William Theed. Queen Victoria\u2019s love of Scotland stemmed from the novels of Walter Scott that she had read as a child, and the Highland landscape reminded Albert of his native Franconia. The couple\u2019s deep interest in Scottish customs and traditions found full expression at Balmoral Castle, which Albert helped design and was completed in 1856. The all-encompassing Highland style of the interiors can be seen in watercolours by James Roberts. Among a number of objects from Balmoral is a set of candelabra in the form of Highlanders holding trophies, a collaboration between Landseer and two leading manufacturers, Minton of Stoke-on-Trent and Winfield of Birmingham. Even at Osborne there were reminders of life in Scotland, including Carl Haag\u2019s \u2018Morning in the Highlands\u2019 and \u2018Evening at Balmoral\u2019, and an extraordinary suite of stag-horn furniture. Prince Albert\u2019s abiding interest was the marriage of good design with new manufacturing techniques. In 1850 a royal commission was established, with Albert as its chairman, to organise an international exhibition celebrating technological and artistic accomplishments. Housed in Sir Joseph Paxton\u2019s Crystal Palace in London\u2019s Hyde Park, \u2018The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations in 1851\u2019 was perhaps Albert\u2019s greatest achievement. The royal couple lent many pieces to the Great Exhibition, and the Queen spent some \u00a34,000 on works of art. Among her purchases were porcelain by S\u00e8vres and Minton, sculpture and furniture, including an extraordinary carved writing table of Swiss manufacture. The Directors of the East India Company presented Victoria with a dazzling selection of jewels from the Indian section of the exhibition. (Extract from Royalty Magazine Vol. 21\/10)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A revealing new exhibition, \u2018Victoria & Albert: Art & Love\u2019 focuses on the connection between art and romance, a medium through which Queen Victoria and Prince Albert expressed their intense love for each other. It is the first exhibition ever to focus on Victoria and Albert\u2019s shared enthusiasm for art. Bringing together more than 400<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":736,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[166,106,105,172],"class_list":{"0":"post-732","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-royal-history-and-heritage","8":"tag-royal-history-and-heritage","9":"tag-prince-albert","10":"tag-queen-victoria","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"yoast_head":"\nVictoria & Albert: Art & Love - Royalty Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/royalty-magazine.com\/wpcoco\/royal-history-and-heritage\/732\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Victoria & Albert: Art & Love - Royalty Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A revealing new exhibition, \u2018Victoria & Albert: Art & Love\u2019 focuses on the connection between art and romance, a medium through which Queen Victoria and Prince Albert expressed their intense love for each other. 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