Franz Xaver Winterhalter: At the Court of Queen Victoria

"Queen Victoria and Prince Albert with Five
of Their Children" by Franz Xaver Winterhalter

"Louise-Marie, Queen of the Belgians, had first introduced Winterhalter to her father, Louis-Philippe. She was also responsible for arranging his first visit to the English Court, describing him to Queen Victoria in a letter of 16 May 1842 as 'an excellent man full of zeal for his art, of goodwill, obligingness and real modesty.' Between 1842 and 1871, Winterhalter painted more than a hundred works in oil for Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, including four pairs of state portraits, the great family piece, sequences of their children at various ages and in various guises, infants, highlanders, and débutantes, portraits of the ever-growing army of relatives that meant so much to the Queen, and quantities of delightful, informal sketches.

He came to England every summer or autumn for a stay of six to seven weeks, sometimes longer, in the early years when commissions were plentiful, and painted at Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle, but rarely elsewhere in England. He made few contacts socially or professionally outside the Royal circle, and exhibited only a token number of pictures at the Royal Academy. He understood English but spoke it brokenly, joining a small and select group of German retainers at court.

The nature of Winterhalter's appeal to the British Royal family is not difficult to explain. His portraits were elegant, refined, lifelike and pleasingly idealized. He invested the traditional imagery of monarchy with romance and a fresh idealism which inspired the Royal couple as parents and rulers. The Queen, whose chief concern was that portraits should be like, was easily satisfied. The more knowledgeable Prince Albert, however, responded to the academic and technical virtuosity of his compatriot.

His painting aside, he fitted easily into court life, made his contribution to social occasions, provided the Queen with her first lessons in oil painting, advised the Prince on the arts, helped to secure pictures for him and became, in short, a friend. His simplicity of manner and absence of affectation appealed to the Queen, who liked plain speaking and directness in those around her. She never ceased to be fascinated by watching him paint, his skill in catching likeness, his wizardry with the brush. She was used to the vagaries of the artistic temperament, and expected painters to be unreliable. The methodical Winterhalter, turning portraits out like clockwork, was a paragon."

To be continued

(Excerpts from the introduction by Richard Ormund, to "Franz Xaver Winterhalter and the Courts of Europe 1830-70.")