James Roberts (c. 1800-67)
The Princess Royal's last Birthday Table at Windsor, 21 November 1857 dated 21 Nov 1857
Watercolour and bodycolour | 24.8 x 33.8 cm (whole object) | RCIN 919806
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A watercolour showing a topographical interior view of the Breakfast Room at Windsor Castle, where Princess Victoria's birthday table was displayed 21 November 1857. The table is decorated with a flower garland and laden with presents. Dated and inscribed: Nov 21 1857 / Windsor Castle.
Victoria and Albert commissioned and collected many watercolours throughout their marriage documenting aspects of their public and private lives together. This included a sequence of watercolours depicting the temporary birthday tables created on the occasion of the Queen’s birthday, 24th May, but this is the only watercolour depicting a birthday table arranged for a member of her family that remains in the Royal Collection. This was an event with particular emotional resonance, as it was the last birthdays that Victoria, Princess Royal, the Queen and Prince Albert's eldest child, spent with her parents and siblings before her wedding in January 1858 and subsequent departure to live with her husband in Germany.
The Queen's birthday table watercolours show that every year a tradition which had begun in the Queen's childhood was observed. This was the arranging of a birthday table, laden with presents and embellished with floral arrangements, which by the second decade of her married life included more and more elaborate decorations; on her birthday in 1856 the Queen recorded that the room was “most tastefully decorated & arranged in quite a new way. The gilt cages with doves & the flags, had a charming effect.” Joseph Nash painted four depictions of these tables in the 1840s, but from 1851 James Roberts was given the commission. After Prince Albert’s death in 1861, the birthday tables were only photographed and never again painted.
This watercolour was originally mounted in View Album VII. 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.Provenance
Originally mounted in View Album VII, folio 68. Roberts was paid 5 gns (including travelling expenses) for a drawing of the present table (RA ADDC4/306/7)
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Medium and techniques
Watercolour and bodycolour
Measurements
24.8 x 33.8 cm (whole object)
Other number(s)
RL 19806
