The Queen's Lodge, Windsor, in 1876 by Henrietta Ward (1832-1924). c.1872 (exhibited 1873). Oil on canvas. H 118 x W 133.3 cm. Accession number WAG 2960; gift from George Audley, 1925. Kindly made available via Art UK on the Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC 4.0). Image download, text and formatting by Jacqueline Banerjee, with an additional note by Pamela Gerrish Nunn. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Ward explains in her Reminiscences (adding an incorrect extra "e" to the name "Delany"):
This latter work was suggested to me by The Letters and Correspondence of Mrs. Delaney, edited by Lady Llanover. It simply depicted a visit paid by Mrs. Delaney to the King and Queen in the retirement of their family circle. The persons present are the King and Queen, Princess Sophia, the Princesses Mary and Ameha, and Mrs. Delaney, who speaks of Her Majesty as "graceful and genteel" and possessing so much "sweetness of manner" that she at once felt perfectly at ease in her presence. This Mrs. Delaney is in conversation with the Queen, the Princesses are all occupied, and the King is on his hands and knees playdng with the Princess Amelia.
My critics one and all told me I gave a truthful representation of the everyday life of George III, his Queen and family circle. My readers will, I trust, pardon my adding that the Art Journal, in concluding a lengthy and laudatory review, said, "As a representation of Royal social life, this picture is the most perfect essay we remember to have seen." [167-68]
Additional note by Pamela Gerrish Nunn
This conversation piece was shown at the Academy of 1872, glossed with quotations from the memoirs of Mrs Delany, amateur artist, bluestocking and friend of the royal family. One of the artist’s more elaborate compositions, it includes Mrs Delany herself and the Queen talking together at right as in the left foreground King George plays with Amelia, one of the five princesses, the rest of whom are grouped around a table with a presumed governess or lady-in-waiting.
While the artist was dogged by invidious comparison with her husband’s work, often motivated by sexist prejudice, this work does reveal how tempting such a mode of appraisal could be: it evokes very strongly E.M. Ward’s much earlier Royal Family of France in the Prison of the Temple (1851), not only in its sympathies but in its compositional elements and overall arrangement. Although Ward was understandably reluctant to reveal details of the tuition she received from her husband in her novice years, it is not inconceivable that she learnt at that point from copying his works, and that this could well have been one of her early models.
Bibliography
Morris, Edward. Victorian and Edwardian Paintings in the Walker Art Gallery. Liverpool: Walker Art Gallery, 1996.
Ward, Henrietta. Mrs E.M. Ward’s Reminiscences. Ed. E, O’Donnell.London: Pitman 1911. Internet Archive. Contributed by Cornell University Library. Web. 11 March 2022.
Created 11 March 2022