Overblown and unpleasant kings - Wilhelm II and Carol II, portraits by de László

Emperor Wilhelm II, 1909-11.
Though recently repaired, the portrait still shows the marks of  five slashes apparently inflicted by Russian soldiers at the end of World War II.

The first grandchild of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, "Willy" suffered a birth injury that permanently damaged his left arm; many believe his disability, and others' reaction to it, severely affected his psychology. He was further warped by his early indoctrination into the all-pervasive Prussian military milieu, and manipulated by politicians who were opposed to the liberal ideas of his father, and who encouraged his increasingly arrogant and pompous behavior. He was eventually alienated from his parents, directing his anger and spite at his mother, especially. As an adult, he was decidedly a poseur, rarely appearing out of military uniform, and presenting himself in portraits as the personification of the most bombastic and bellicose form of kingship. Callous and vindictive, petty and dictatorial, fairly humorless, meddling. Oh, and World War I.

The painting before restoration. The central arch of the colonnade of the Communs, Neues Palais, Potsdam, can be seen in the background.

A finished sketch for the full-length portrait, 1909.

Two sketches for the portrait, circa 1908-11. Here, in the background, the Communs is shown from the same angle as in the photograph below.

In the studio: the artist, the horse, one of the artist's sons, and the unfinished painting, 1911.
At this stage, the building in the background still looks to be a view of a wing of the Communs rather than the colonnade.

Sketch of the borzoi included in the painting, though reversed. In the smaller sketch to the right of the dog, here, one can make out the
Emperor and the horse in the same configuration as in the final painting, but the dog - as here - is in a reversed position. Circa 1908-10.

Reference photograph with sketch of  the horse's head and the dog in its originally planned position. As in the finished painting,
the Communs of the Neues Palais can be seen in the background, though viewed from a different perspective.

Reference photograph. The Emperor is posed on the terrace of the Neues Palais, Potsdam.

1908.

1908.

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King Carol II of Romania, 1936.

A great-grandchild of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, Carol grew up under the control of his great-uncle King Carol I, who spoiled the child and, at the same time, instilled a "profound love of German militarism". He also largely excluded the boy's parents from any role in his upbringing; Carol would eventually become alienated from his parents, especially his mother the vivacious, flamboyant Queen Marie. Lazy and apathetic, from his teenage years he became known for his romantic misadventures. At the age of twenty-four, second in line to the throne, he abandoned his army post in order to marry a commoner. The marriage was annulled seven months later, though the couple continued to live together; they even had a child the following year. Only a year later, he made a properly dynastic marriage to Princess Helen of Greece. (A second cousin and also a great-grandchild of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.) Their only son was born soon after, but the marriage quickly soured, due to Carol's playboy lifestyle, his drinking and womanizing. Then he took up with the infamous Elena Lupescu, who would be his mistress (and finally wife) for the rest of his life, and Helen was finally compelled to divorce him in 1928. Before that, in 1925, because of his relationship with Lupescu, Carol had renounced his right to the throne in favor of his son and had gone to live in Paris with his mistress. Two years later, Carol's father died and his five year old son was proclaimed king. But only three years, later Carol returned to Romania in a coup d'état and took the throne from the boy. Inflicting many petty cruelties on his former wife and alienating his son, indulging in a sybaritic lifestyle, Carol managed to weather the vagaries of Romania politics and the encroachment of Hitler for ten years; it helped that he had a complete lack of scruples. But he was deposed in 1940, and Michael once again became king. Carol and Luspescu went into exile, first in Mexico, then settling permanently in Portugal.

Sketch for the official portrait.

The artist and model.

1936.

Dispossessed children - two royal Indian portraits by Winterhalter

Princess Gouramma, 1852.

Princess Gouramma (4 July 1841, Benares - 30 March 1864, London) was the daughter of Chikka Virarajendra, the ruler of Coorg. The Raja was deposed by the British in 1834 and taken political prisoner. In 1852, stating that he wished his daughter to be raised a Christian and to receive a Western education, the ex-Raja was permitted to travel to England; while there, he would also go to court to demand that the East India Government restore his wealth. Arriving in England, the Raja was received by Queen Victoria with the respect due his royal status, and he put his daughter into her care. That same year, the Princess was baptised in a ceremony conducted by the Archbishop of Canterbury in the Chapel at Buckingham Palace and took the name "Victoria", with Queen Victoria as her Sponsor (godmother). She was later considered a possible bride for the Maharaja Duleep Singh [see below], but he declined to marry her. In 1860 she wed Colonel John Campbell - thirty-one years her senior - with whom she had a daughter - Edith Victoria Gouramma Campbell - born the following year. The Princess died of tuberculosis three years later - she was only twenty-two - and was buried at Brompton cemetery.

In Winterhalter's portrait, the Princess is holding a bible, an allusion to her conversion to Christianity.

Three photographs by Roger Fenton 1854.

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The Maharaja Duleep Singh, 1854.

Maharaja Duleep Singh (also known as Dalip Singh; 6 September 1838, Lahore - 22 October 1893, Paris), the last Maharaja of the Sikh Empire. He was Maharaja Ranjit Singh's youngest son, the only child of Maharani Jind Kaur. After the assassinations of four of his predecessors, he came to power in 1843, at the age of five. For a while, his mother ruled as Regent, but three years later, after the First Anglo-Sikh War, she was replaced by a British Council of Regency and imprisoned; mother and son were not allowed to meet again for thirteen and a half years. In 1849 the ten-year-old child was deposed and put into the care of a British governor who undertook a program of Anglicization; in 1853 he was converted to Christianity. (Something he later rebelled against, reconverting to his native Sikhism in 1886.) The following year, at the age of fifteen, he was exiled to Britain where he was befriended and much admired by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. He quickly became a close personal friend of the Royal Family, visiting them at Osborne and attending court functions. He was granted an annual pension and lived lavishly in a series of leased estates in England and Scotland. In 1863 he purchased the Elveden estate in Suffolk, which he energetically restored, transforming it into an efficient game preserve, and it was here that he gained his reputation as the "fourth best shot in England". He married twice and had a total of eight children from his two marriages. Increasingly upset by the circumstances of his exile and his lack of personal freedom, though, he became involved in several intrigues to leave Britain and regain his throne. Continually thwarted by the British government, he was arrested in Yemen in 1886, during an attempt to return to India; it was there that he reclaimed his Sikh faith. He died in Paris seven years later, at the age of fifty-five. His wish that his body be returned to India was not honored, and his remains were brought back to Elveden Church, where he was given a Christian burial.

On the terrace at Osborne House, by Dr. Ernst Becker, 1854.

Photograph by John Jabez Edwin Mayall, circa 1861.

Photograph by JW Clarke : Bury St Edmunds, 1877.

 Adapted from the Royal Collection website:

Queen Victoria was captivated by Duleep Singh when first introduced to him in 1854, the year in which he was brought to England, writing, "Those eyes and those teeth are too beautiful." And she recorded in her journal on 10 July 1854 that, "Winterhalter was in ecstasies at the beauty and nobility of bearing of the young Maharaja. He was very amiable and patient, standing so still and giving a sitting of upwards of 2 hrs." Winterhalter's male portraits are rarely as romantic or exotic as this image, which places the young Maharaja in an imaginary landscape in Indian dress. He is shown wearing his diamond aigrette and star in his turban and a jewel-framed miniature of Queen Victoria by Emily Eden. During one of the sittings he was shown the Koh-i-Noor diamond that he had surrendered in 1849. Queen Victoria recorded how she had given him the newly recut jewel to inspect and that he then handed it back to her, saying how much pleasure it gave him to be able to make the gift in person. (Remarkably tactless, the Queen, as the famous diamond had been in every sense stolen by the invading British as a spoil of war, an action controversial even at the time. Now included among the Crown Jewels of the United Kingdom, the governments of India, Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan have all claimed ownership of the Koh-i-Noor and demanded its return at various times in recent decades.)

The extended Orléans family gathered in England for the funeral of Marie-Amélie, former Queen of the French

"La nombreuse famille des Orléans réunie en Grande Bretagne lors des funérailles de l'ex-reine des français, SAR la princesse Marie-Amélie de Bourbon et des Deux Siciles."

Queen Marie-Amélie died at Claremont House in Surrey on 24 March 1866. She was eighty-three years old, having outlived her husband Louis Philippe by sixteen years, and having lived in exile for nearly twenty. Clarement House had been lent to the deposed royal couple by Queen Victoria, and in this photograph Marie-Amélie's surviving children, grandchildren, and other members of the extended Orléans family are to be seen gathered on the grounds there. After the funeral ceremonies, the Queen's coffin would rest in the cemetery chapel at nearby Weybridge along with that of her husband and other members of the family who had died in exile. It was not until ten years later that their remains were allowed to be returned to France, where they now reside in the Orléans mausoleum at Dreux.

Illustrations of the Queen's lying-in-state and her funeral procession.

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Click to see the full, unreduced panoramic image.

Queen Victoria and Prince Albert after a Drawing Room, 11 May 1854 - photographs by Roger Fenton

The Queen is wearing different earrings in this photograph. She's wearing the "Turkish"earrings (and necklace) she wore at her wedding.*

* Coincidentally, thanks to the misinformation so rampant on the Internet, the Queen is almost
always said to be dressed for her wedding in these images. Uninformed Pinterest "pinners"
and amateur historians apparently seem to think that a veil - always - signifies a wedding.

***

The bracelet that the Queen is wearing on her wright wrist in these pictures is best seen in the last. At around  the time of the couple's marriage in 1839 their favorite miniaturist, Sir William Ross, painted the profile portrait of the Prince. It immediately became one of his wife's favorite images of her beloved spouse, and she had a copy made and set into the diamond bracelet seen above. She wore it frequently through the rest of her life, and it's to be seen in many of her early portraits and later photographs.

Portrait by John Partridge, 1840.

Portrait by Sir William Ross (?), circa 1840-1.

Detail of above.

Portrait by Stephen Catterson Smith the Elder, 1854 (or 1849).

Lithograph of the above painting. (The Queen is also wearing the "Oriental Circlet" designed by Prince Albert; the opals with which it was
set were later replaced with rubies by Queen Alexandra and it would become one of the favorite tiaras of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother.)

Photograph by Gustav William Henry Mullins, 1893.

***

Roger Fenton (28 March 1819, Rochdale, Lancashire – 8 August 1869, Potter's Bar, Hertfordshire), pioneering British photographer, best known for his early portraits of the British royal family and images of the Crimean War. His grandfather was a wealthy cotton manufacturer and banker, his father a banker and Member of Parliament. He graduated from Oxford in 1840 with a "first class" Bachelor of Arts degree, and went on to read law at University College - sporadically; he did not qualify as a solicitor until 1847 - but was much more interested in becoming a painter. He studied in Paris and London and in 1849, 1850 and 1851 he exhibited paintings in the annual exhibitions of the Royal Academy. But after visiting the Great Exhibition in London in 1851 and being greatly impressed by the photography on display there, he took up that discipline and again went to Paris to study the most up to date techniques. By the next year he was exhibiting his work, traveling abroad, and calling for the establishment of a photographic society; a year later the Photographic Society was founded, with Fenton as founder and first Secretary. It later became the Royal Photographic Society under the patronage of Prince Albert.

In 1854, at the urging of friends and patrons - including the Prince - Fenton traveled to the Crimea where war was raging. He spent three months there, enduring blazing heat, several broken ribs from a fall, and cholera, and he produced more than 350 usable large format negatives, extremely valuable historical and artistic documents. The images were widely shown in England and France. From a wealthy background he wasn't discouraged by his work's lack of commercial success. But he considered himself an artist and was by disheartened by photography's increasing accessibility to amateurs and by its low regard, then though of as a trade rather than art form. In 1863, Fenton sold his equipment and returned to the law as a barrister. He died six years later after a brief illness. He was only fifty years old.

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And, finally, as an example of the sometimes awkward artistic response to the rapid advent of photography in the mid-nineteenth century, this is a hand-colored print of Fenton's portrait, the first image in this post. Artist Edward Henry Corbould has transformed the photograph into a small painting, adding background features and altering details of the Queen's gown, the pedestal, etc. This sort of hybrid - gouache and/or watercolor over a photographic print - was very popular at the time. (You can see some other examples of this practice in my post on the comtesse de Castiglione.)

Horsey ladies; or, trop d'amazones - random equestriennes

Queen Victoria on horseback, a preparatory sketch by Sir Francis Grant, 1845.

Maria Theresia as Queen of Hungary on the crowning hill of Pressburg, unknown artist, circa 1741.

Unknown, ND. (This should rather be labeled a "mule-y lady.")

Laetitia, Lady Lade, by George Stubbs, 1793.

Detail of above.

Baronne X. - Amazone en chapeau haut-de-forme devant un étang, by Alfred de Dreux, circa 1845-50.

Princess Marie Henriette of Austria, after 1865 Queen of the Belgians, circa 1860. (Two images.)

Mrs. Margaretta Park Frew Riding, by Sir Alfred James Munnings, circa 1924.

The Empress Eugénie, by Charles-Édouard Boutibonne, 1856. The now lost Château de Saint-Cloud is to be seen in the background.

The Empress Elizabeth of Russia, by Georg Christoph Grooth, circa 1743-49.

Grand Duchess later Empress Maria Feodorovna, circa 1860s.

Same as above, circa 1870s.

Detail of above.

Maria Feodorovna's sister, Alexandra, Princess of Wales, and her husband the future Edward VII, Sandringham, before 1867.

Alexandra, Princess of Wales, circa 1886. (Note that she's seated on the off side; after a severe bout with rheumatic fever in 1867,
she was left with a permanently stiff right knee and thereafter had to use a sidesaddle with the pommel on the "wrong" side.)

Lady on Horseback, Joseph Campeche, 1785. (For whatever reason, her saddle is also on the "wrong" side.)

Maria Anna of Neuburg, Queen of Spain, by Luca Giordano, 1693-94.

Wilhelmine of Prussia, Queen of the Netherlands, by Tethart Philip Christian Haag, 1789. (Unusually, she is riding astride.)

Grand Duchess Alexandra Iosifovna, circa 1860s. This looks to be a photographic image of the Grand Duchess melded with a
photograph of an actual painting - a very early version of Photoshop. The Pavlovsk Palace can be seen in the background.

Unknown, ND. This appears to be some version - a preparatory sketch, using a different model? - of the following image.

Isabel II dirigiendo una revista militar, Charles Porion, 1867.

Amazone au caraco jaune, by Alfred de Dreux, circa 1840-50s.

Grand Duchesses Tatiana and Olga Nikolaevna and their aunt, Grand Duchess Eleonore of Hessen und bei Rhein, Livadia, 1912.

Madame la duchesse de la Ferté, from a series of French court ladies, all by Joseph Parrocel, circa 1670s.

Madame la duchesse d'Aumont, from the same series.

Madame la comtesse d'Armagnacq, from the same series.

Madame la duchesse de Bouillon, from the same series.

Unknown, ND.

Marie Jeanne Baptiste de Savoie-Nemours, duchessa di Savoia, the self-styled "Madama Reale", by Charles Dauphin (?), circa 1660-70s.

Woman in French Garde du Corps uniform, unknown artist, circa 1787.

Caterina Insarda marchesa di Caluso and Eleonora Delibera San Martino marchesa di Parella, unknown artist, Savoy, circa 1658-63.

Unknown, ND.

 Isabel of France, Queen of Spain and Portugal, by Diego Velázquez, 1635-36.

Margarita of Austria, Queen of Spain and Portugal, by Diego Velázquez, 1634-35. Painted more than twenty years after her death.

Empress Elisabeth at the hunt, circa 1870-80.

Queen Marie Antoinette at the hunt, by Louis-Auguste Brun, called "Brun de Versoix", 1783.

Emma Powles on her Grey Hunter accompanied by her spaniel in a river landscape, by Jaques-Laurent Agasse, circa 1810-20.

Queen María Luisa of Spain, by Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes, 1799.

The courtesan Catherine Walters aka "Skittles" (?), circa 1870s. (Notice the painted backdrop.)

The comtesse de Ranchicourt leaving for the hunt, by Théodore Chassériau, 1854.