A watercolour showing Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, with their three eldest sons, inspecting wounded men of the Grenadier Guards in the Marble Hall, with Col. Thomas Wood.

Thomas was a military artist for the Illustrated London News. In this scene, the Queen and members of her family meet thirty-two wounded guardsmen returned from the Crimea. The Queen recorded in her journal how ‘It was a touching sight, & one could not see a finer set of men ... whom it made one’s heart bleed, to see so mutilated ... I had meant to make some kind of general speech, but I was so agitated, that it all stuck in my throat’. The watercolour shows the colourful appearance of the Grand Hall which had recently been redecorated.

Dated, Buckingham Palace, 20 February 1855

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