A watercolour view of the exterior of the Rosenau, with a flag flying from the round tower to left. Signed and dated "D. Morison 1845".

n August 1845 Queen Victoria visited Germany for the first time, in company with her husband Prince Albert. The main purpose of the couple’s trip was to stay with Albert’s brother Duke Ernest II and his wife Alexandrine in Coburg, where Albert grew up and where Queen Victoria’s mother, the Duchess of Kent, was also born. The Rosenau was the ducal summer residence, and where Albert himself was born on 26 August 1819. After spending their first night there, Victoria wrote with emphasis in her journal “How happy, & how joyful we felt on awakening to feel ourselves here, at the dear Rosenau, my dearest Albert’s birth place & favourite place! I told him I was so delighted, so over happy, so over thankful to be able to come here at last, which we so wished” (20 August 1845).

Victoria and Albert commissioned a number of watercolours capturing scenes of their visit and views of places in which they stayed and the sights they saw during their visit to Germany. Douglas Morison had already painted several views of Coburg and Gotha for Prince Albert; these, including this view (with the addition of the figure of a man and dog in the foreground) were reproduced as lithographs in a publication of 1846 (see RCIN 817127).

This watercolour was originally mounted in View Album III. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert compiled nine View Albums during their marriage. These albums contained watercolours and drawings documenting their life together and were arranged in chronological order. The albums were dismantled in the early twentieth century and rebound in new volumes both in a different arrangement and with additional items, but a written record of their original contents and arrangement still exists.