James Roberts (c. 1800-67)
Queen Victoria's Birthday Table at Osborne, 24 May 1859 dated 1859
Watercolour and bodycolour | 25.6 x 22.4 cm (whole object) | RCIN 919873
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A watercolour view of the birthday table arranged for Queen Victoria's 40th birthday in 1859, decorated with floral garlands and laden with gifts including drawings made by her children. Signed, dated and inscribed at bottom left: JR 1859 / Osborne.
Victoria and Albert commissioned and collected many watercolours throughout their marriage documenting aspects of their public and private lives together, included a sequence of watercolours depicting the temporary birthday tables created on the occasion of the Queen’s birthday, 24th May. From 1848 until Albert's death in 1861, Victoria spent all of her birthdays at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight. 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 VIII. 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 VIII, folio 32. Roberts was paid 10 gns on 28 June 1859 for a 'drawing and photograph' done at Osborne (RA PP2/35/10194)
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Medium and techniques
Watercolour and bodycolour
Measurements
25.6 x 22.4 cm (whole object)
Other number(s)
RL 19873
