19 (Feb 2022)
‘Unmistakeably visible’: Queen Victoria in Frith‘s The Marriage of the Prince of Wales
Abstract
When William Powell Frith was asked to paint the marriage of Prince Albert and Princess Alexandra in 1863, it was impressed upon him that the ‘great object with the Queen herself’ was that she be ‘unmistakeably visible’ in the composition. In this article, I offer a close reading of the resulting painting and its reception, arguing that Victoria’s decision to commission the picture from Frith lent a very particular set of contexts to the form and content of her visibility. In 1863 Frith was at the height of his fame for his modern-life subjects, Ramsgate Sands, Derby Day, and The Railway Station. By commissioning the ‘successor’ to this series, Queen Victoria placed herself quite deliberately into the very visible context of ‘modern life’, both in the painting and at the Academy. In Frith’s ingenious composition, Victoria sits high above the crowd, clearly visible to the viewers of the picture, presiding over her citizenry and the continuation of her dynasty, even if within the space of the picture itself only the loving few can see her. Represented as both aloof from and fully present within the contemporary moment, Queen Victoria is unmistakeably visible both as the vigilant monarch and the secluded widow.
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