Prince Albert's sitting-room, Windsor Castle dated 1843
Pencil, watercolour and bodycolour | 31.0 x 38.5 cm (whole object) | RCIN 919811
-
A watercolour depicting a topographical interior view of the Blue Room at Windsor Castle, showing a piano in the background centre, a desk to the foreground right, and the surrounding furnishings. Signed and dated to the bottom left: Douglas Morison 1843. The verso is also signed and dated.
This watercolour shows Prince Albert's sitting room at Windsor Castle following his marriage to Queen Victoria in 1840. The paintings on the walls include Edwin Landseer's portrait of the Queen (RCIN 405050) in the window alcove, the Town and Castle of Ischia by Clarkson Stanfield (RCIN 405004), The Coast at Amalfi by G.E. Hering (RCIN 404826) and David Roberts's View of Toledo (RCIN 405042) on the facing wall and The Sanctuary by Landseer (RCIN 403195) on the right.
Victoria noted in her journal on 27 March 1843 that Morison had made 'a very good [watercolour] of Albert's sitting room at Windsor', and subsequently the artist was commissioned by th royal couple, who became keen collectors of the fashionable nineteenth-century watercolour genre of interior views, to paint a series of interiors of Buckingham Palace (RCINs 919897-919901, 919912 and 919917). All but one of these Buckingham Palace watercolours were exhibited at the Old Watercolour Society annual exhibition in 1844, and attracted a satirical review from William Makepeace Thackeray, who was writing under the pseudonym Michael Angelo Titmarsh.Provenance
Commissioned by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert; Morison was paid 8 gns for this work in February 1843 (Royal Archives ADDT/231/38)
-
Creator(s)
-
Medium and techniques
Pencil, watercolour and bodycolour
Measurements
31.0 x 38.5 cm (whole object)
Object type(s)
Subject(s)
Other number(s)
RL 19811