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COMMENTARY
August 9, 2008
Royally
Queen Victoria has long been among my favourite people (but no, we never met), and I was looking yesterday morning at some pen sketches, engravings, and watercolours by Her late Majesty (no, I did not find them in the flea market, but they were reproduced in a book that I did find there). We forget that "Vicki" (as she was once known among her intimates) was not herself a Victorian, only married to one (an alpha-male Victorian at that; and a skilled draughtsman). She has herself the lively spirit of an earlier period -- about the age of Jane Austen's floruit, I should think -- and just happened to survive to the threshold of the 20th century.There is charm and real wit in many of her drawings. There are two of her daughter, Princess Victoria, when a very small child. In one the little girl, done up in frills and bonnet, is playing on the floor with a ball of wool, rather like a kitten. In another she is on a maid's lap, being fed from a bottle. The way the maid is handling the bottle -- as if she'd never touched one before -- and the way the child is sucking from it -- as if she'd gone without milk all morning -- is equal to a doodle by Hogarth. On the other hand there is a watercolour of "Balmoral under Snow" that would do credit to any of the British 18th-century topographical painters, except the very best; it also shows a touch of Chinese influence. Even the signature on one of her engravings -- "VR del." -- has been scratched in with a wink and sparkle, as if it were saying, "Right, I'm the Queen, aren't I?" She loved Men, as one sees in her sketches, and indeed her lifelong performance of mourning after the death of Prince Albert was a bit of an act, as one realizes upon reading some of her least published private letters. She is downright flirtatious with some of them, and her crush on Disraeli was sufficiently obvious to throw her courtiers into damage control. (At one moment she was refusing to appoint Gladstone prime minister, even though he had won the election; Disraeli had to rush over to the palace, to talk her down.) The grand black costumage was ostensibly to keep the men off her; but also to keep her off them. This bespeaks a past era, when women actually liked men. George III was another of the great amateur artist-sovereigns before her (the man who inspired the American Revolution), and most of Victoria's numerous children were quite accomplished. It helped that they received instruction from some of the foremost artists in the realm. Queen Victoria herself had early technical instruction in watercolour from William Leighton Leitch, and among her drawing masters later were Sir Edwin Landseer, and Edward Lear (an author, too, and of “The Courtship of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò" -- perhaps the most poignant poem in the English language). The Princess Victoria mentioned above -- later Queen of Prussia and Empress of Germany -- grew into an extraordinarily adept copyist. If you have seen her painting after Holbein’s “Hanseatic Merchant,” you will realize that had she not been high-born, she could have made a good living as an art forger. And Princess Louise was a very talented as well as dreamy romantic oil portraitist -- with an incompletely suppressed satirical edge, and an advanced Pre-Raphaelite sensibility. To this day, most of our royal family continue to be at least competent in drawing and painting, though too modest to display; except, Her present Majesty’s son, Charles, seems unashamed of his furrowed landscape productions. The man Elizabeth married, Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark, is merely a photographer, but he and others of the last generation have known enough to continue enriching the royal collections with worthy drawings and paintings in several genres. For centuries now, that patronage has been predicated on accomplished amateur work; for to be able to “see” paintings, the best method is, try to paint one. One may wander through almost any national art gallery or museum, to be reminded of how undeservedly we benefit from this royal and aristocratic heritage. I admit, this is rather an odd topic for my Saturday column, when everyone’s mind is on the wretched “Olympics” in “Beijing.” But there is nothing I can do or say about that, besides perhaps unrolling a few Tibetan prayer banners, or repeating my mantra, “Long live Taiwan!” David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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