Mementos of a marriage: Victoria and Albert's watercolours

The watercolours in these albums were either commissioned by the couple themselves or given to them by relations, friends or others as gifts, and many were painted by leading British and European artists.

Victoria and Albert enjoyed visiting watercolour exhibitions in London and discovering the work of artists who were new to them, and they both drew and painted themselves. Queen Victoria, in particular, became a talented painter in watercolours.

These 'valuable' albums were known as the ‘View’ or ‘Souvenir’ albums, and they became precious mementos for Victoria after the untimely death of Albert in 1861.

This was not just because of the memories contained in the watercolours themselves but also thanks to the shared activity of the queen and her husband in creating the albums together.

Victoria often wrote in her journal about the quiet, happy evenings she and Albert spent looking at and arranging their watercolours, deciding which scenes to include in which album and what title should be inscribed on the page underneath each.

Significantly, when Prince Albert died Queen Victoria decided not to make any further albums, and therefore these nine became an extremely important visual memorial of the queen's life with her 'dearly beloved Husband'.

Manchester from Kersal Moor, dated 1852, by William Wyld (1806-89) | Victoria had visited Liverpool on 9 October 1851 and Manchester over the following two days, and commissioned a watercolour of each of the cities from Wyld soon after. The overcrowding and slum conditions of the workers' housing were a severe social problem, and the Queen noted in her journal: 'The mechanics and work-people, dressed in their best, were ranged along the streets in their button-holes; both in Salford and Manchester, a very intelligent, but painfully unhealthy-looking population they all were, men as well as women'. Wyld's view of the city is, however, overtly romantic. |Read more at Royal Collection Trust's website