A sentimental image of dynastic intent, William Beechey’s portrait of the infant Victoria with her mother, the Duchess of Kent, asserts her right to rule: in her hand she clasps a miniature of her deceased father.
‘Striking … though not entirely correct’ was Victoria’s assessment of the first of Henry Tanworth Wells’ paintings of the moment the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lord Chamberlain informed her of her accession on 20 June 1837. Wells’ painting – undertaken fifty years later – is a romantic reimagining of that ‘historical incident’.
In this unabashedly regal portrait of 1843, Francis Grant references only Victoria’s role as queen.
A youthful Victoria is depicted in an informal setting surrounded by flowers in the second year of her reign.
On different occasions Victoria dismissed official portraits of the ‘dear Being’ Lord Melbourne as ‘too old and not handsome enough’ and ‘not in my opinion half pleasing enough’. Here she attempted her own sketch of her first, best-loved prime minister.
Prussian sculptor Emil Wolff depicted Albert as a Greek warrior. Victoria thought it ‘very beautiful’ but Albert later commissioned a second, less ‘undressed’ version.
At the first of the three great fancy dress balls given by Victoria, on 12 May 1842 she appeared as Queen Philippa, Albert as Edward III. Her costume, here recorded for posterity by Landseer, was based on the Westminster Abbey tomb effigy of the medieval queen, on which Edward, famously devoted to his bride, lavished £3,000 in 1369.
In words and pictures, the popular press dwelt on the royal couple’s conspicuous happiness and domestic bliss.
In 1845, Victoria paid Franz Xaver Winterhalter £105 for this group portrait in which she appears alongside her four eldest children (from left: the Princess Royal, Princess Alice, Prince Alfred and the Prince of Wales).
Victoria’s own badge of the Order of Victoria and Albert, c. 1862–3, on which, uniquely, the position of the portraits of husband and wife was reversed.
Photographs like this one, depicting Victoria with Alice and Louise and a portrait of the recently deceased Albert, encouraged some observers to discern in her mourning a theatrical dimension.
In Victoria’s mind a picture of shadows – ‘as I am now, sad & lonely’ – Landseer’s famous Her Majesty at Osborne in 1866 gave rise to ribald comment on public exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1867.
The windowed Victoria at one of her collection of spinning wheels, an unsympathetic image of stolidly unrelenting gloom.
Victoria commissioned Tuxen’s sumptuous group portrait to commemorate the family gathering of her Golden Jubilee in 1887.
At the end of her life, Victoria declined to grant Jean Joseph Benjamin-Constant proper sittings. His portrait of 1899 has an ethereal quality, which seems to foreshadow Victoria’s death as well as investing her with intimations of immortality.
