User:Pelagic/Journal/2023/12

2023-12-26

Etchings by Queen Victoria

TIL that Victoria and Albert produced 80+ etchings from 1840 to 1844.

(Digitisations of) 14 items from the Royal Collection and Aberdeen Archives are in Commons. Other prints are in the British Museum, or at commercial auction. c:Category:Etchings by Victoria of the United Kingdom

Wikidata query for visual artworks by V.R.

Returns 16 results, mostly paintings with some etchings.

SELECT DISTINCT ?item ?itemLabel ?img WHERE {
  SERVICE wikibase:label { bd:serviceParam wikibase:language "[AUTO_LANGUAGE]". }
  {
    SELECT DISTINCT ?item ?img WHERE {
      ?item p:P170 ?statement0.
      ?statement0 (ps:P170/(wdt:P279*)) wd:Q9439.
      ?item p:P31 ?statement1.
      ?statement1 (ps:P31/(wdt:P279*)) wd:Q4502142.
      OPTIONAL { ?item wdt:P18 ?img }
    }
    LIMIT 100
  }
}

B.M. held an exhibition of 20 items "displayed for the first time" in 2019.

• https://www.britishmuseum.org/exhibitions/home-royal-etchings-queen-victoria-and-prince-albert
• Carline Halleman, 2019-06-01 "A new exhibit at the British Museum in London will celebrate the 200th anniversary of the monarch's birth". Town and Country. https://www.townandcountrymag.com/society/tradition/a27613431/queen-victoria-prince-albert-etching-exhibition-british-museum-2019/
• At Home: Royal etchings by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert (Q124001758)

Sotheby’s cites (Scott-Elliot, 1961) as a source. Noted at c:Category talk:Etchings by Victoria of the United Kingdom#Total number and date range of works by Victoria.

This line of enquiry all started because I stumbled on "Queen Victoria as an Etcher (Second paper – concludes)" by Christian Brinton, The Critic vol. 37 (Jul–Dec 1900), no. 1 (July) pp. 34– . https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=inu.32000000676892&view=1up&seq=50&size=200

Harewood

A volume held at Harewood House contains 75 prints with personal annotations by H.M. It was exhibited in 2017. https://harewood.org/about/blog/notes/collection-of-etchings-by-victoria-and-albert-go-on-public-display-for-the-first-time/

2023-12-27

Victoria's and Albert's etchings cont.

One image I like is young Vicky held by her nurse. (Victoria, Princess Royal, with her nurse (Q124002522) We have File:Queen Victoria-Victoria, Princess Royal.jpg, which from the camera metadata appears to have been taken in-person by a visitor to the exhibition. V&A Museum catalog entry [1] has an image with different lighting and less heavy line weight. It's striking how much difference lighting and exposure can make to line art. Both bear the V.A.M. mark, so it's unquestionably the same artefact.

British Museum holds a copy, and Sotheby’s offered another for sale in 2020.

Another interesting image is the one that started me down this rabbit-hole. BM [2] calls it “A lady in Tudor costume”, with the curator's comment “Possibly a self-portrait of Queen Victoria”. In the Critic (1900) it is captioned as a self-portrait. I wonder if Victoria also used herself as a model for the Abbess.

Update: Earlier I went and snarfed c:File:Victoria, Princess Royal, with her nurse (1841). VAM E.2175-1932.jpg from V&A, and created a more B&W version of it. ⁓ Pelagic ( messages ) 11:32, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

2023-12-28

Despite sources saying that A Lady in Tudor Costume is a self-portrait, compare [3], [4], [5] versus [6], [7].