Art, Passion & Power: The Story Of The Royal Collection

Episode three: Palaces and Pleasuredomes. Andrew Graham-Dixon continues his exploration of the Royal Collection, the extraordinary collection of art and decorative objects collected by kings and queens over the last 500 years and today owned by The Queen as Sovereign.

In this third episode he has reached the age of the Romantics: the flamboyant George IV who created so much of the visual look of the modern monarchy, and Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, for whom collecting was an integral part of their happy marriage.

As Prince of Wales, George was a famously loose cannon - a spendaholic prince whose debts ballooned in tandem with the royal waistline. But as a collector, Andrew argues, George was one of the great artistic figures of the Romantic age.

For Queen Victoria art was a passion that she could share with her beloved husband, Prince Albert, who believed that learning how to make art was the best way to understand it. Andrew argues that Albert was a natural curator: he instilled a love for collecting in his children and compiled an early 'database' of the complete works of Raphael, kept in his new 'Print Room' in Windsor Castle as a tool for art historians.

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