Carte de Visite featuring Queen Victoria seated on her pony Flora, with her personal servant John Brown attending.

£495 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

Photograph of Queen Victoria in mourning, taken by Jabez Hughes to aid Edwin Landseer (1802-73) in his painting of Queen Victoria at Osborne (1865-7), which was commissioned by the Queen to record her intense sadness in the years following her beloved husband Albert’s death. On Monday 8 May 1865 the Queen recorded in her journal that she was “to be photographed on my pony for that sad picture. I was done 3 times very successfully.” The “sad” picture (which is in the Royal Collection (RCIN 403580)) depicts Queen Victoria “as I am now, sad lonely, seated on my pony, led by Brown, with a representation of Osborne”. Queen Victoria had envisioned a pair of complementary yet contrasting paintings to be painted by Landseer, titled Sunshine and Shadow: one to show their happy life together, the other, of a mournful widow, enduring her endless grief since her husband’s untimely death. The Royal Collection has two associated items in their holdings (RCIN 2160447; RCIN 2800855). We have not been able to locate this in other institutions’ holdings. The more common image of Queen Victoria on a horse being attended by John Brown is one in which she is mounted on her horse Fyvie, taken in 1863 by photographer George Washington Wilson.

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