[QUEEN VICTORIA]
Carte de Visite featuring Queen Victoria seated on her pony Flora, with her personal servant John Brown attending.
Photograph of Queen Victoria in mourning, taken by Jabez Hughes to aid Edwin Landseer (1802-73) in his painting of Queen Victoria at Osborne (1865-7), which was commissioned by the Queen to record her intense sadness in the years following her beloved husband Albert’s death. On Monday 8 May 1865 the Queen recorded in her journal that she was “to be photographed on my pony for that sad picture. I was done 3 times & very successfully.” The “sad” picture (which is in the Royal Collection (RCIN 403580)) depicts Queen Victoria “as I am now, sad & lonely, seated on my pony, led by Brown, with a representation of Osborne”. Queen Victoria had envisioned a pair of complementary yet contrasting paintings to be painted by Landseer, titled Sunshine and Shadow: one to show their happy life together, the other, of a mournful widow, enduring her endless grief since her husband’s untimely death.
The Royal Collection has two associated items in their holdings (RCIN 2160447; RCIN 2800855). We have not been able to locate this in other institutions’ holdings. The more common image of Queen Victoria on a horse being attended by John Brown is one in which she is mounted on her horse Fyvie, taken in 1863 by photographer George Washington Wilson.
