This is a copy by William Corden of Winterhalter's portrait of Queen Adelaide (RCIN 405389) painted in 1849 which Queen Victoria had called 'her very image and a treasure'.

Queen Adelaide, the wife of Queen Victoria's uncle, King William IV, sat for the original portrait, wearing a black lace cap and holding a letter in her hand, two months before her death. Shortly afterwards, Queen Victoria wrote to the King of the Belgians that Winterhalter had 'made such a beautiful and striking picture of the poor dear Queen'. Adelaide had married William in 1818, when she was 25 and William was 52, but the marriage proved a happy one despite the age difference and the fact that the couple had never met before Adelaide accepted his proposal. She had tried, without much success, to improve the relationship between her husband and the Duchess of Kent, Queen Victoria's mother. After William's death in 1837, Adelaide's health deteriorated and she became an invalid, travelling to the Mediterranean in search of a warmer climate. At her request she was buried simply, carried to the grave by sailors, at Windsor.