You are using an old version of Internet Explorer. It may not display all the features of this and other websites. To improve security and online experience, please use a different browser or
update Internet Explorer
.
The collections at Osborne remain the single most important example of the shared tastes of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. They are intensely personal, with many items commissioned by the royal couple and given to each other as birthday and Christmas gifts. Thanks to their enthusiastic patronage of a wide range of contemporary artists and sculptors in both Britain and Europe, the collection represents a wide spectrum of creativity. It is also outstanding as an assemblage of mid-19th-century works of art displayed in their original setting.
The Indian collection – largely gifts and acquisitions to celebrate Queen Victoria's role as Empress of India – is of considerable ethnographic interest. The collections in the Swiss Cottage and Museum (an exercise in education for the royal children) reflect contemporary interest in exploring and recording the human and natural worlds. They are an important example of 19th-century collection and display.
Most of the works on display at Osborne form part of the Royal Collection and are reproduced here courtesy of the Royal Collection Trust/His Majesty King Charles III.
Franz Xaver Winterhalter - La Siesta
La Siesta
Date: 1844
Type: Painting
Material: Oil on canvas
Place Made/Found: Paris
Artist: Franz Xaver Winterhalter
Lender: Purchased by English Heritage with generous assistance from the Art Fund and the Island Friends of Osborne, 2008
Queen Victoria records in her journal entry for 22 December 1841, ‘To-day I got from Paris a beautiful picture by Winterhalter which I had ordered. It is quite small, representing a “Siesta”, three lovely Italian girls, with one of them asleep.’ It was the first painting by Winterhalter that the Queen acquired. He went on to become her unofficial court portraitist, painting as many as a hundred works in this capacity.
Thomas Allom - Osborne
Osborne
Date: c.1850-60
Type: Drawing
Material: Pencil and brown wash heightened with white, on paper
Artist: Thomas Allom
Prince Albert worked with the builder Thomas Cubitt in the design and construction of Osborne. The Prince chose an Italianate style because the elevated marine setting, with its temperate climate, reminded him of the Bay of Naples. On the right is the Pavilion (completed in 1846), which contains Queen Victoria and Prince Albert's rooms. To the left is the Main Wing (completed in 1851), where the royal children had rooms.
John Bell and The Coalbrookdale Company - Andromeda
When this sculpture was exhibited at the Great Exhibition of 1851, the Illustrated London News remarked that it was ‘one of the most graceful and pleasing of Mr. Bell’s numerous productions and it has been most successfully cast in bronze by the Coalbrookdale Company. Since its location in the Crystal Palace it has been purchased by Her Majesty.’ The statue is part of a fountain on the lower terrace at Osborne.
Garden Seat
Garden Seat
Date: 1851
Type: Garden Seat
Material: Cannel coal
Artist: Ludwig Gruner (designer) and F Williamson (maker)
This seat, which was commissioned by Prince Albert and displayed at the Great Exhibition, is made of cannel coal. It was designed by Ludwig Gruner, Prince Albert's art adviser, in the Renaissance style and carries Victoria and Albert's initials on the central panel, surrounded by scallop shells. Cannel coal, which is more compact than ordinary coal, can be worked and polished, and this is a particularly monumental example of its use.
This chair is part of a suite of furniture that was bought by Prince Albert in 1846 and placed in a small sitting room at Osborne, which came to be known as the Horn Room. Queen Victoria no doubt recognised that this acquisition would provide the Prince with a pleasing reminder of his lifelong passion for deer-stalking, as experienced in the forests of Thuringia and later in the Highlands of Scotland.
William Dyce, Neptune Resigning the Empire of the Seas to Britannia
Neptune Resigning the Empire of the Seas to Britannia
Date: 1847
Type: Painting
Material: Fresco
Place Made/Found: Osborne House
Artist: William Dyce
This fresco shows an appropriate subject for Queen Victoria's maritime residence. Neptune stands in a shell chariot drawn by three seahorses. He is handing his crown to Britannia via Mercury. Beside Britannia is the lion of England, while the figures behind represent industry, trade and navigation. Prince Albert encouraged the re-adoption of fresco painting in Britain and he commissioned Dyce to paint frescoes in the new Palace of Westminster.
This statue portrays Prince Albert's pet greyhound, Eos. The Prince was given her as six-week-old puppy. Although he was only 14 at the time, he brought her up and trained her himself, and she remained his companion until she died on 31 July 1844, when she was ten and a half years old. John Francis, a favourite sculptor of Queen Victoria, exhibited this bronze at the Royal Academy in 1848.
Richard Brydges Beechey - Her Majesty's Yacht ‘Victoria and Albert’
Queen Victoria and Prince Albert acquired the Osborne estate in 1845. One of its main attractions was the privacy provided by its own beach and shoreline. The royal yachts were able to embark and disembark in Osborne Bay, about a mile's drive by carriage through the estate to the house. The beach and the Italianate silhouette of the house, built between 1845 and 1851, can be seen in the background.
Presented to Queen Victoria by the officers of the royal yachts on the occasion of her Diamond Jubilee in 1887.
John Lucas - Prince Albert, The Princess Royal and Eos
Prince Albert, The Princess Royal and Eos
Date: 1843
Type: Painting
Material: Oil on canvas
Artist: John Lucas
This painting was given to Queen Victoria by Prince Albert in 1843. The Prince, aged 24, is seen accompanied by his eldest child, the three-year-old Princess Victoria. Prince Albert's pet greyhound is standing alongside. This intimate, domestic image is an illustration of the close relationship that Prince Albert enjoyed with his daughter. It was especially at Osborne that Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were able to spend time with their children.
