A watercolour showing Emperor Napoleon III and Queen Victoria at the bottom of the Grand Staircase in Windsor Castle, followed by Prince Albert escorting the Empress Eugénie and, behind them, the Prince of Wales looking outwards.

In September 1854 Prince Albert visited the military camp at Boulogne (see, for example, RCIN 920050) at the invitation of Napoleon III, who the British had allied with - along with Turkey and Sardinia - in the Crimean War against Russia. The following year, the Emperor and his wife were invited to make a State Visit to England, in part an attempt to persuade Napoleon III against carrying out a wish to travel to the Crimea to lead his troops. This watercolour depicts a moment shortly after the arrival of the Emperor and Empress at Windsor Castle on 16 April 1855. Prince Albert had travelled to Dover to met the Imperial couple, and then escorted them to Windsor via train. Queen Victoria received them with her eldest children, ministers and members of her court and Yeomen of the Guard in attendance.

Emperor and Empress spent three days at Windsor and three staying at Buckingham Palace in London. Events included a State Dinner held in St George’s Hall at Windsor, the investiture of the Emperor into the Order of the Garter (see RCIN 920054), a trip to the opera in Covent Garden (RCIN 920055), a military review and a visit to the Crystal Palace at Sydenham (RCINs 920231 and 919991). Victoria and Albert then travelled to Paris in August of the same year for a reciprocal State Visit (see, for example, RCIN 920059).

In December 1855 Paul & Dominic Colnaghi published a volume titled ‘The Visit of their Imperial Majesties the Emperor and Empress of the French, to Her Most Gracious Majesty The Queen’. This comprised lithographs after watercolours commissioned from George Housman Thomas and Louis Haghe by Victoria and Albert of scenes from the visit, with accompanying letterpress descriptions. The introduction stressed the important context to this particular royal visit, and also the “intrinsic and exclusive value” of the illustrations because of the presence, by command, of the artists at the events depicted. This watercolour was reproduced as the first plate in the publication.

This watercolour was originally mounted in View Album VI. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert compiled nine View Albums during their marriage. These albums contained watercolours and drawings documenting their life together and were arranged in chronological order. The albums were dismantled in the early twentieth century and rebound in new volumes both in a different arrangement and with additional items, but a written record of their original contents and arrangement still exists.