Franz Xaver Winterhalter (1805-73)
Queen Victoria (1819-1901) 1843
Oil on canvas | 272.5 x 161.1 x 5.0 cm (support, canvas/panel/stretcher external) | RCIN 404388
Garter Throne Room, Windsor Castle
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Winterhalter was born in the Black Forest where he was encouraged to draw at school. In 1818 he went to Freiburg to study under Karl Ludwig Schüler and then moved to Munich in 1823, where he attended the Academy and studied under Josef Stieler, a fashionable portrait painter. Winterhalter was first brought to the attention of Queen Victoria by the Queen of the Belgians and subsequently painted numerous portraits at the English court from 1842 till his death. Queen Victoria is dressed in the mantle of the Garter with the Garter round her left arm. She wears George IV's Diamond Diadem and the earrings and necklace made in 1839 from the Turkish diamonds given by Sultan Mahmúd II in 1838. Her Sceptre and the Imperial State Crown are on the cushion beside her. In the background we can glimpse the south east corner of Buckingham Palace, as if looking from the Green Drawing Room. The Queen recorded in her journal on 30 September 1843 that she and Prince Albert ‘looked at Winterhalter’s full length portraits of us both, which are now quite finished & really splendid, both as to painting & likeness’, and in 1899 she remarked that it was ‘the portrait she liked best’. Many copies were made of the painting, life-size, in miniature and on china, to hang in British Embassies, and to give as presents. Signed and dated : F Winterhalter / London 1843.
Provenance
Commissioned by Queen Victoria; hanging in the Throne Room at Windsor Castle in 1875
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Medium and techniques
Oil on canvas
Measurements
272.5 x 161.1 x 5.0 cm (support, canvas/panel/stretcher external)
Category
Object type(s)