This official portrait along with its pendant depicting Queen Victoria (RCIN 401413) were the first to be commissioned by the Queen and Prince Albert from the German artist Franx Xaver Winterhalter, who would become their favoured contemporary painter and would produce over one hundred works in oil for his royal patrons between 1842 and 1871. Winterhalter was recommended to the Queen by Queen Louise of the Belgians, wife of her uncle Leopold, who described the artist in a letter to Queen Victoria as ‘an excellent man full of zeal for his art, of goodwill, obligingness and real modesty’ (RA VIC/ MAIN/ Y/ 9/ 77). He first arrived in London in May 1842 and returned each summer or autumn for six or seven weeks for many years.

Prince Albert wears a field marshal’s undress uniform with the star of the Garter and badge of the Golden Fleece, and carries a Mameluke-hilted sword. In 1843 the aiguillette – the decorative cord worn suspended from the right shoulder – would replace the traditional epaulettes and scales on all field marshal uniforms; the idea may have come from Prince Albert himself.

Sittings took place during June and July 1842. Towards the end of June Queen Victoria wrote, ‘I then gave him [Winterhalter] my last sitting, the likeness is perfect & the picture very fine; only my gown and the background have still to be finished’ (Journal, 25 June, 1842). She was equally pleased with the portrait of Prince Albert which was described as ‘such a beautiful picture’ (ibid., 27 July, 1842) and after his death she named it as one of the three portraits of the Prince which she really admired.

The pictures were hung in the White Drawing Room at Windsor Castle. Many replicas were subsequently commissioned for relatives and other sovereigns. In a version commissioned immediately from Winterhalter as an official gift to the French King Louis-Philippe (Musée national du Château de Versailles, inv 10032), the Queen additionally wears the insignia of the Garter. In 1846 Louis-Philippe presented the Queen in return with full-size copies in these portraits on Sèvres porcelain plaques (RCIN 406225-6; De Bellaigue 1999). They were set into the walls of the Council Room at Osborne where they remain. Miniature versions were also produced in enamel to be set into bracelets.

Text adapted from 'Victoria and Albert: Art & Love', London, 2010