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While the bust has the appearance of a highly realistic likeness, the sculptor did not work from life but from photographs, using his own mother as a model for the figure and drapery. He said at the time, “One was Queen of my country – the other Queen of my heart”. Founded in 1816 the Fitzwilliam Museum is the principal museum of the University of Cambridge and lead partner for the University of Cambridge Museums (UCM) Major Partner Museum programme, funded by The Arts Council. The Fitzwilliam’s collections explore world history and art from antiquity to the present day. It houses over half a million objects from ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman artefacts, to medieval illuminated manuscripts, masterpiece paintings from the Renaissance to the 21st century, world class prints and drawings, and outstanding collections of coins, Asian arts, ceramics and other applied arts. The Fitzwilliam presents a wide ranging public programme of major exhibitions, events and education activities, and is an internationally recognised institute of learning, research and conservation. Queen Victoria did not officially return to public ceremonial duties until 1872 and during this time she was confronted by a complex personal and political dilemma. As a woman, she had to adhere to the nineteenth century’s strict societal codes surrounding mourning behaviour, while never compromising the authority of the monarchy. For eleven years after 1861, Victoria privately worked with her ministers to conduct state affairs while withdrawing from public life. This absence contributed to a new wave of republican and anti-monarchical sentiment, and in response to this long period of personal and political crisis, the Queen employed the private strategies used for representing mourning in photography to recast her image in the public realm. The public display of private grief, like the regulation of personal mourning by social convention, in connecting both the private and public, was something that Victoria could exploit. The powerful sculpture of virtuoso carving is perhaps the most impressive portrait ever made of the elderly Queen-Empress. The ‘System’, as it was called, sounds rather cruel. Victoria came to loath Conroy and his attempt to control her.
The incorporation of death into family portraiture, as manifested by the regular inclusion of Theed’s bust of Prince Albert, introduced a visual composition which was echoed in many paintings throughout Victoria’s later reign. Arguably, one of the most successful paintings depicting the Queen in mourning was Albert Graefle’s portrait of her. 9 Graefle was a close associate of Franz Xaver Winterhalter, a painter especially favoured by the royal family. In this painting Victoria is shown in mourning dress. On the table next to her is a box of Foreign Office papers and a bust of Albert by Theed, implying Albert’s continued influence on Victoria’s political vision. When the Queen was sitting for this portrait, she wrote in her journal that Graefle was ‘such a clever painter & paints so fresh and cleanly. His likenesses are also very good.’ 10 This painting was clearly admired by Victoria, as a surviving negative in the Royal Collection shows it prominently on display in her private apartments. 11 Importantly, Graefle’s portrait marks a shift in representation. Victoria wears the clothing and Mary Stuart shaped widow’s cap associated with a young widow. However, she is no longer solely looking in devotion at Albert’s bust but looks ahead to the future, while still reinforcing the visual narrative of their inseparable union. It is significant that it was not completed until 1864, three years after Albert’s death, and that portrait commissions during the intervening years were abandoned. 12 This suggests the complexity of the challenge in reconstructing a new visual identity for the Queen which, while satisfying personal and family needs, could also serve a national imperative. The indexicality of the photography the Queen commissioned and its established place in the material culture of mourning gave the photographs an emotional force that proved hard for portrait painters to achieve. Graefle’s painting, which seeks to combine the iconography of state portraiture in its inclusion of the Queen’s ermine-trimmed robes arranged over the chair on which she sits, presents a less convincing message about either the Queen’s private or her public body.
Queen Victoria quoted in ‘The Hartley Pit Disaster, January 1862’, in Frances Dimond and Roger Taylor, Crown and Camera: The Royal Family and Photography, 1842–1910 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1988), p. 63. A brawl breaks out in the pub after Kat Slater ( Jessie Wallace) pushes Karen Taylor ( Lorraine Stanley) over a table after the pair argue as it is revealed that Mo Harris ( Laila Morse) tried to con people out of money by faking the death of Kat Moon ( Jessie Wallace). A bar stool is thrown out of one of the windows. The sculpture depicts Queen Victoria towards the end of her long life. The marble has been sensitively carved to reflect the texture of her skin and her meditative expression, as well as the soft swirls of cloth around her head and shoulders. Den Watts ( Leslie Grantham) evicts Alfie Moon ( Shane Richie) and his family on Christmas Eve after buying the Vic. This captivating likeness of Queen Victoria showcases the extraordinary skills of celebrated sculptor Alfred Gilbert.
Victoria’s wedding – the white dress, the carriage ride through the streets, the very public nature of it – set the pattern for every subsequent marriage ceremony in the main line of descent within the royal family.Grant Mitchell ( Ross Kemp) sets fire to the pub to claim money on the insurance, with his wife, Sharon ( Letitia Dean), plus Roly the Poodle trapped inside. Little Mo Mitchell ( Kacey Ainsworth) is raped– and impregnated– by Graham Foster ( Alex McSweeney). Victoria’s wedding in 1840 to Albert was very public. It was the first royal marriage ceremony to be arranged with the enjoyment of the London public in mind. She travelled to the Chapel Royal at St James’s Palace in an open carriage so that everyone could see her.
The sculpture was based on a full-length bronze statue of Queen Victoria, which Gilbert had produced in 1887. Gilbert rarely worked in marble; most of his sculptures are of bronze, making this piece even more exceptional.
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Mary Warner Marien, Photography and Its Critics: A Cultural History 1839–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 76. Parian was a type of porcelain developed in the 1840s for use in statuary. It had similar surface qualities to marble, and was named after the Greek island of Paros, where marble was quarried. Parian was less prone to discoloration than unglazed bone china, which had previously been used to produce ceramic figures in imitation of marble. Parian figures and busts became very popular, making sculpture affordable for the middle classes. Numerous models were produced, depicting classical subjects or, as here, eminent individuals. Anne M. Lyden, A Royal Passion: Queen Victoria and Photography (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2014), p 142. Margaret Homans, ‘“To the Queen’s Private Apartments”: Royal Family Portraiture and the Construction of Victoria’s Sovereign Obedience’, Victorian Studies, 37 (1993), 1–41 (p. 28).
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