By Kathryn Jones, Senior Curator of Decorative Arts

Reading time: 5 minutes

Queen Alexandra was born in 1844 in Copenhagen, Denmark, the second child and eldest daughter of Christian IX and Queen Louise of Denmark. In March 1863, she married Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VII in St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle. The couple went on to have six children – five of whom survived infancy. Their eldest son, Prince Albert Victor, tragically died aged only 28 from influenza.

From the time of her arrival in Britain, Alexandra, known fondly as ‘Alix’ to her family, was renowned for her charm and sense of style. Alfred Tennyson, the Poet Laureate, called her the 'Sea King's daughter from over the sea'.

She commissioned a tea service decorated with copies of her own photographs – the first of its kind to be created in Britain.

Alongside her own works, Alexandra also collected images by contemporary photographers such as Benjamin Stone and Alvin Langdon Coburn. She was particularly fond of the Danish photographer, Mary Steen, who captured informal portraits of Alexandra’s family in Denmark. 

Like other women of her generation, Alexandra was also an accomplished watercolour artist. She used trimmed cartes-de-viste (small, commercially produced portraits) of friends and family, to create whimsical collages, which she hand-coloured in watercolours. 

In this film, we take a close look at Alexandra's life and discover how her love of photography grew from a royal figure who was photographed, to taking her own photography, to developing it as an art form by which she could express herself.

Art collections

Alexandra’s collections were underpinned by her close family network. Through her connections, the Danish artist Laurits Tuxen became one of the chief painters at the British court.

Among the reminders of Alexandra’s beloved homeland in her collections were landscape paintings by Heinrich Hansen and porcelain from the Royal Copenhagen factory. She collected small works of art of every type, including items of ceramic and silver, decorative screens, gold boxes and souvenirs.

When Alexandra’s sister, Dagmar, married the future Russian Emperor Alexander III in 1866, taking the name of Maria Feodorovna, Alexandra began collecting works of Russian art. These were often gifts from her sister, especially pieces by the renowned jeweller, Fabergé.

The firm soon became a favourite in royal circles and in 1907, Edward commissioned Fabergé craftsmen to make portraits of the animals on the Sandringham Estate. Here, Alexandra enjoyed a more domestic life involving herself with the garden and dairies. These small, hardstone sculptures of domestic, farm and wild animals were presented to Alexandra on her birthday.

Royal fashion

Throughout her life, Alexandra was seen as fashionable and stylish. Vogue magazine named her 

the legitimate head of fashion throughout the vast British domain 

 

Alexandra was not afraid to break from tradition. For her coronation, she chose to have her robes designed by the French couturier Morin Blossier, instead of a British designer. The design, fabrics and colour were kept secret during the planning to prevent other ladies of the court copying them. 

The dress was made of gold silk, intended to dazzle in the blaze of electric light of Westminster Abbey. It was layered with a fine net sewn in India, adorned with thousands of tiny gold spangles and embroidered with the national flowers of Britain (roses, thistles and shamrocks). 

Over the dress, Alexandra wore a velvet mantle of a shade described as ‘petunia’ – a unique purple colour chosen by the Queen. She asked for the mantle to be entirely covered with embroidered crowns – a break with British tradition, though in keeping with the Danish style. 

Spectacular jewellery

On state or formal occasions, Alexandra would dazzle in spectacular jewels, often wearing multiple strings of pearls and diamond necklaces. She set the fashion for high collars and choker necklaces, initially worn to hide a small scar on her neck.

Nevertheless, her personal jewellery was often sentimental, containing small photographs or miniature portraits of family. In one of the earliest sculptures created of her, Alexandra asked to be shown wearing a brooch created from an Egyptian scarab, which had been presented to her by Edward at the time of their engagement.

As a collector, Queen Alexandra’s legacy is the hundreds of small-scale works of art which filled Sandringham and Marlborough Houses, but as a Queen and fashionable figure she may be seen as the epitome of the Edwardian age of elegance.