Awakening to the news - Queen Victoria being told she is now queen, Kensington Palace, Tuesday, 20 June 1837

 

Queen Victoria Receiving the News of her Accession, by Henry Tanworth Wells, 1887. In the Royal Collection.

Upon the death of her uncle, King William IV, Princess Alexandrina Victoria of Kent, aged eighteen years and three weeks, ascended the throne of the United Kingdom as Queen Victoria. This is an extract from her diary on that momentous day :

I was awoke at 6 o'clock by Mamma, who told me that the Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Conyngham were here, and wished to see me. I got out of bed and went into my sitting-room (only in my dressing-gown), and alone, and saw them. Lord Conyngham (the Lord Chamberlain) then acquainted me that my poor Uncle, the King, was no more, and had expired at 12 minutes past 2 this morning, and consequently that I am Queen. Lord Conyngham knelt down and kissed my hand, at the same time delivering to me the official announcement of the poor King's demise. The Archbishop then told me that the Queen was desirous that he should come and tell me the details of the last moments of my poor, good Uncle; he said that he had directed his mind to religion, and had died in a perfectly happy, quiet state of mind, and was quite prepared for his death. He added that the King's sufferings at the last were not very great but that there was a good deal of uneasiness. Lord Conyngham, whom I charged to express my feelings of condolence and sorrow to the poor Queen, returned directly to Windsor. I then went to my room and dressed.

Since it has pleased Providence to place me in this station, I shall do my utmost to fulfil my duty towards my country; I am very young and perhaps in many, though not in all things, inexperienced, but I am sure, that very few have more real good will and more real desire to do what is fit and right than I have ...

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Victoria Regina, by Henry Tanworth Wells, 1880. A second - earlier - version by the same artist. Given to the Tate by the artist's daughter on his death in 1903.

Your Majesty, color photogravure after Mary Louisa Gow, published by The Graphic, 1895.

Illustration published in The Graphic, 1 June 1897, during Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee.

Queen Victoria Awakened to Hear the News of her Accession, published in the Illustrated London News, 14 May 1911.

A color version of the same.

Emma and Federica Bankes of Soughton Hall, by Henry Tanworth Wells, 1869

Henry Tanworth Wells, RA (December 14, 1828, London – January 16, 1903 London), English miniature and portrait painter.  He was an intimate of the Pre-Raphaelites though he, himself, painted in a more academic style.

This is certainly no great, deathless work of art, but I think the unusually informal portrait of sisters at their dressing table quite charming.  The two English girls - one dreamy and self-absorbed, the other smiling directly out at the viewer - and the tension of the crowded composition, with a large mirror behind the girls and another implied, out of view on the left.  And I find the details very particular and well done.

(From the notes on the provenance of this painting when it was up for auction at Bonhams in 2013:  "Emma and Federica Bankes were the granddaughters of Henry Bankes MP, of Kingston Lacy. Their father, Edward, was the youngest of four sons and as such would not have expected to inherit, however his elder brother, the eccentric traveller and antiquarian, William, died childless in Venice in 1855 and Edward inherited Soughton Hall."  Soughton Hall, a large country house in Wales, is now a hotel.)