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1 of 253523 objects
James Roberts (c. 1800-67)
Queen Victoria's Birthday Table at Osborne, 24 May 1854 dated 1854
Watercolour and bodycolour | 20.7 x 16.8 cm (whole object) | RCIN 926520
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A watercolour view of the birthday table set up for Queen Victoria's 35th birthday in 1854, decorated with floral garlands and flags and laden with gifts; hanging above the table can be seen Cairo by Jacob Jacobs (RCIN 408943), given to Victoria by her husband. Signed at bottom left: JR Osborne / 1854.
Victoria and Albert commissioned and collected many watercolours throughout their marriage documenting aspects of their public and private lives together, including a sequence of watercolours depicting the temporary birthday tables created on the occasion of the Queen’s birthday, 24th May. From 1848 until Albert's death in 1861, Victoria spent all of her birthdays at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight. Every year a tradition which had begun in the Queen's childhood was observed. This was the arranging of a birthday table, laden with presents and embellished with floral arrangements, which by the second decade of her married life included more and more elaborate decorations; on her birthday in 1856 the Queen recorded that the room was “most tastefully decorated & arranged in quite a new way. The gilt cages with doves & the flags, had a charming effect.” Joseph Nash painted four depictions of these tables in the 1840s, but from 1851 James Roberts was given the commission. After Prince Albert’s death in 1861, the birthday tables were only photographed and never again painted.
This watercolour was originally interleaved by the Queen in her journal, which no longer survives.Provenance
Commissioned by Queen Victoria; Roberts was paid 8 gns for this drawing on 31 May 1854 (RA AddT/232/68)
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Medium and techniques
Watercolour and bodycolour
Measurements
20.7 x 16.8 cm (whole object)
Other number(s)
RL 26520
