Colonial and Indian Exhibition: foreign visitors offering gifts to the Queen, 8 July 1886. R. T. Pritchett (1828–1907). 1886. Watercolour. 17.7 x 31.8 cm (whole object). RCIN 920803. Royal Collection Trust / © His Majesty King Charles III 2023. Image acquisition, text and formatting by Jacqueline Banerjee. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
The watercolour shows the interior of St George's Hall, Windsor Castle, with Queen Victoria, supposedly together with Prince and Princess Henry of Battenberg (i.e. Princess Beatrice and her husband), receiving foreign visitors during the Colonial and Indian Exhibition that year. But the Queen is by far the most prominent figure, as might of course be expected. Although it is a colourful composition, capturing the sense of an exotic spectacle, twenty-first century sympathies would not be engaged by the sight of some richly robed colonial dignitary abasing himself in the royal presence. He seems to have scattered petals at the Queen's feet.
Links to Related Material
- Imperial Federation Map created by Walter Crane for the 1886 exhibition
- "Artist and Empire": exhibition at Tate Britain, and Artist and Empire: Facing Britain's Imperial Past, ed. Alison Smith, David Blayney Brown, and Carol Jacob
Bibliography
Colonial and Indian Exhibition: foreign visitors offering gifts to the Queen, 8 July 1886. Royal Collection Trust. Web. 14 September 2023.
Long, Basil Somerset. "Pritchett, Robert Taylor. Dictionary of National Biography. Supplement 2, 1901-11: 138-9. Web. 12 September 2023.
Millar, Delia. "Pritchett, Robert Taylor (1828–1907), gun maker and landscape painter." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Online ed. 12 September 2023.
Created 12 September2023