Max Brückner (1836-1919)
The Rosenau: the gardens of the Hereditary Prince of Saxe-Coburg and Prince Albert with the Vogelhaus or Aviary c. 1863
Pencil and watercolour with gum arabic | 17.2 x 24.5 cm (whole object) | RCIN 920445
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A watercolour view of the gardens of the Hereditary Prince of Saxe-Coburg and Prince Albert, showing the Vogelhaus or Aviary. Signed "Max Brückner".
Brückner was from a family of theatrical stage designers and painters. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert acquired a substantial corpus of watercolours by Brückner and his father Heinrich depicting the landscapes and sights in and around Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, the duchy of Prince Albert's family. Max Brückner's works tend to be bolder and more painterly in technique than those of his father.
The Queen and Prince Consort visited Coburg twice, in 1845 and 1860, and the Queen then returned on a number of occasions following Albert's death in 1861. The Rosenau was the house in which Prince Albert was born, and in 1863 Queen Victoria recorded organising the restoration of the garden and summerhouse following some vandalism.
Together, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert mounted many of their watercolour views of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha in three albums, and a surviving typescript list of their contents is presumed to accurately reflect their arrangement. These albums were dismantled around 1930 and many of the watercolours rearranged in the new, topographical, Souvenir Albums. The first of the albums, from which this watercolour derives, seems to have largely contained watercolours related to the visit of the Royal couple in 1845 with a few works, such as this one, from a later date.Provenance
Originally mounted in the first volume of the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha albums
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Creator(s)
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Medium and techniques
Pencil and watercolour with gum arabic
Measurements
17.2 x 24.5 cm (whole object)
Other number(s)
RL 20445