Joseph Nash (1809-78)
The Queen's Birthday Table at Osborne House, 24 May 1848. 1848
Watercolour and bodycolour | 21.9 x 24.0 cm (whole object) | RCIN 919871
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A watercolour showing a topographical interior view of the Horn Room at Osborne, where Queen Victoria's birthday table was displayed 24 May 1848. The table is decorated with flowers and laden with presents, including a pair of glass candleabra by Osler (RCIN 41311) and (on the fireplace to the right) Mary Thornycroft's marble bust of Princess Helena (RCIN 41292) both of which were given to the Queen by Prince Albert.
Victoria and Albert commissioned and collected many watercolours throughout their marriage documenting aspects of their public and private lives together, including a sequence of watercolours depicting the temporary birthday tables created on the occasion of the Queen’s birthday, 24th May. For the first seven years of her marriage Queen Victoria primarily spent her birthdays at the royal residence of Claremont in Surrey, but after 1848 the royal family were always (with one exception) at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight for the occasion. 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 (including this one), 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 IV. 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 volume IV, folio 53. Possibly related to a payment in 1848 to the artist of £45 for unspecified 'sketches' -
Creator(s)
Acquirer(s)
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Medium and techniques
Watercolour and bodycolour
Measurements
21.9 x 24.0 cm (whole object)
Object type(s)
Subject(s)
Other number(s)
RL 19871