Royal Collection
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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| Established | 1660 |
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| Collection Size | 2 million objects |
| Museum Area | Across the Queen's Gallery, Palaces and Estates |
| Location | The Queen's Gallery, Buckingham Palace, SW1A 1AA |
| Nearest tube station(s) | Victoria, Green Park, and Hyde Park Corner |
| Website | [1] |
Shaped by the personal tastes of kings and queens over more than 500 years, the Royal Collection includes paintings, drawings and watercolours, furniture, ceramics, clocks, silver, sculpture, jewellery, books, manuscripts, prints and maps, arms and armour, fans, and textiles. It is is held in trust by The Queen as Sovereign for her successors and the Nation, and is not owned by her as a private individual.
It is on public display at the principal royal residences and is shown in a programme of special exhibitions and through loans to institutions around the world.
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[edit] The Queen's Gallery
The Queen's Gallery at Buckingham Palace is a permanent space dedicated to changing exhibitions of items from the Royal Collection, the wide-ranging collection of art and treasures held in trust by The Queen for the Nation. Constructed forty years ago on the west front of Buckingham Palace out of the bomb-damaged ruins of the former private chapel, the Gallery has recently been redeveloped. It was reopened by The Queen on 21 May 2002 and is now open to the public on a daily basis.
Containing three-and-a-half times more display space, the new Queen's Gallery is approached through a striking portico leading to a soaring double-height entrance hall and staircase. A multimedia room provides space for computer kiosks, which can be used independently of a visit to the exhibitions. They provide information about items in the current display.
On the upper level of The Queen's Gallery there are seven galleries or rooms, used in a variety of combinations, for special exhibitions of paintings, prints, drawings and watercolours, furniture, porcelain, miniatures, enamels, jewellery and other works of art. The new public areas on the first floor include education and lecture rooms for a range of events.
As part of Her Majesty's Golden Jubilee celebrations, The Queen opened a new Queen's Galley at the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh, which shows changing exhibitions from The Royal Collection. Recent exhibitions have included, Caneletto in Venice, Holbein to Hockeny, Watercolours and Drawing from the Collection of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, Fans from the Royal Collection and is currently showing 'Amazing and Rare Things'.
[edit] Departments
Paintings and Miniatures
- The Royal Collection holds over 7,000 paintings and 3,000 miniatures, one of the most important holdings of Western pictorial art in the world. Dating back to the late 15th century with the establishment of the Tudor dynasty, the collection reflects the individual tastes and needs of kings, queens, consorts and princes over the last 400 years. Unlike a museum collection, therefore, the Royal Collection does not provide a comprehensive,chronological survey. However, the greatest strengths of the Collection lie in the European Old Masters, British portraiture and Victorian painting.
- The most important series of works from the Italian Renaissance are Mantegna’s Triumphs of Caesar at Hampton Court Palace and the Raphael Cartoons on loan to the Victoria and Albert Museum. The Collection also holds beautiful examples of the work of Bellini, Titian, Correggio, Parmigianino and Lorenzo Lotto. There is a particularly rich group of 18th-century Italian paintings, including 50 works by Canaletto. There are outstanding examples of Flemish 17th-century painting including twelve works by Rubens, twenty-six by Van Dyck and four works by David Teniers the Younger. There is also a fine group of works by painters associated with the Golden Age in 17th-century Holland including Johannes Vermeer's A lady at the virginals with a gentleman and enriched by genre subjects by de Hooch, ter Borch, Dou, Metsu, Adriaen and Isaac van Ostade, together with landscapes by Ruisdael and Hobbema.
- With the acquisition of the Öttingen Wallerstein collection, the Royal Collection was added with works by Fra Angelico, Gozzoli, Duccio and Daddi. After the Prince’s death, 22 of the best pictures were given by the queen to the National Gallery in his memory.
- Additional to mainstream European Western Art, the Royal Collection provides an unparalleled history of portrait painting in Britain, from Hans Holbein in the 16th century to Lucian Freud in our own time. Every major contributor to this great tradition – Van Dyck, Lely, Hogarth, Ramsay, Reynolds, Gainsborough and Lawrence – is represented by some of their most ambitious works. The Collection embraces many types of portraiture, from the grandest images of monarchy to Johann Zoffany’s informal ‘conversation pieces’.
- The 3,000 miniatures in the Royal Collection constitute one of the largest groups of such works in existence. The collection spans four centuries and includes examples by the greatest practitioners – François Clouet, Hans Holbein the Younger, Nicholas Hilliard, Isaac Oliver, Samuel Cooper, Jeremiah Meyer, Richard Cosway and Sir William Ross. The development of the miniature as an art form, from its origins in the early 16th century to its slow decline in the 19th, can be traced through examples in the Royal Collection.
Decorative Arts
Drawings, Watercolours and Prints
- The Royal Collection contains around 40,000 drawings and watercolours, and 150,000 prints. The collection is particularly strong in Old Master drawings, especially by Italian artists. Most famous are the groups of around 80 portrait drawings by Hans Holbein the Younger and 600 drawings by Leonardo da Vinci, including studies of anatomy, landscape, water and natural history. From the Italian Renaissance there are also important groups by Raphael and Michelangelo, including several of the latter’s famous ‘presentation drawings’.
- The Italian Baroque drawings are principally of the Roman and Bolognese schools, with large groups by the Carracci Family, Domenichino, Maratti, Sacchi, Sassoferrato, Della Bella, Bernini, Castiglione and Guercino. The collection also contains most of Cassiano dal Pozzo’s encyclopaedic ‘Paper Museum’. The 18th-century Italian drawings are mainly Venetian, with matchless groups by Canaletto, Piazzetta, and Sebastiano and Marco Ricci. There are also significant numbers of Dutch, Flemish, German and French drawings, mainly of the 16th and 17th centuries, including groups by Poussin and Claude. Eighteenth-century English drawings include fine series by Paul and Thomas Sandby (particularly relating to Windsor Castle) and William Hogarth, whilst the thousands of 19th-century watercolours relate principally to the reign of Queen Victoria and to her family and travels.
- The print collection includes large groups by Dürer, Hollar, Canaletto, Della Bella, Silvestre, Callot, William Hogarth and Rowlandson, and collections of prints after the works of Raphael, Reynolds and Landseer. Most of the other prints are organised by subject-matter, including royal portraits of all countries, non-royal British portraits, topography, and prints of historical events.
Books and Manuscripts
- The Royal Collection contains around 125,000 books and manuscripts. The most significant and substantial parts of the collection are held in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle. The Royal Library at Windsor was created in the 1830s at the instigation of William IV. It occupies a suite of rooms on the north side of the Upper Ward, adjacent to the State Apartments.
- Although the majority of the volumes are printed books of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, the Royal Library contains a small but important group of illuminated manuscripts, the best-known of which is the early 15th-century Sobieski Hours. There is also a fine group of incunabula, the earliest and rarest Western printed books, dating from the period before 1500. These include the Mainz Psalter of 1457, the second book ever to be printed with movable metal type.
Sculpture
- The Royal Collection includes approximately 1,400 pieces of sculpture, ranging in date from the late 15th century to modern times. These can be classified, like the paintings, according to whether they were commissioned or purchased as ‘Old Master’ or antique works, the former category is by far the largest.
- A lifelike, painted terracotta bust by the Modenese sculptor Guido Mazzoni (d.1518), which may represent Henry VIII at the age of seven, is the earliest portrait bust in the collection and the earliest piece of Italian sculpture. A rare bronze model by Benvenuto Cellini (1500-1571), executed for François I of France in 1543, entered the Collection at an unknown date.
- The collection of French sculpture was subsequently greatly enriched by George IV, who acquired around 75 outstanding bronze statuettes and marble busts of the 17th and 18th centuries, by sculptors such as François Girardon (1628-1715) Antoine Coysevox (1640-1720) and Philippe Bertrand (1663-1724). It was also George IV who brought into the Collection a famous group of three bronze busts by Leone Leoni (1509-1590) dating from the 1550s.
- Two impressive sets of the Four Seasons in the form of bronze reliefs by Massimiliano Soldani-Benzi (1656-1753) and marble statues by Camillo Rusconi (1658-1728) entered the Collection much earlier, in the second quarter of the 18th century.
- George IV was an important client of the renowned Italian sculptor Antonio Canova (1757-1822), from whom he commissioned three large marble statues for Carlton House. They are now displayed in Buckingham Palace.
- Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were enthusiastic collectors of marble sculptures by British and German artists working in Rome in the 1840s and 1850s, in the wake of Canova and his rival Bertel Thorwaldsen. The royal couple were fond of exchanging birthday gifts of neoclassical statues by such sculptors as William Theed (1804-1891), Emil Wolff (1802-1879) and Richard Wyatt (1799-1850). All of these remain at Osborne House, Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle, constituting the finest collection of this kind to remain in the possession of the family for whom they were first made.
Furniture
- The furniture in the Royal Collection falls into two broad categories. The first and by far the largest group consists of pieces made in Britain to furnish the royal palaces and residences. In the second category are items that were purchased or presented as antiques or curiosities, which are mainly European in origin.
- The cabinet-makers, clock-makers, tapestry weavers and upholsterers who supplied the Great Wardrobe (and after its abolition in 1782, the Lord Chamberlain’s Office) were consistently those at the top of their profession. They included outstanding carvers and gilders, such as James Moore (c.1670-1726), the Pelletier family (French Protestant refugees who settled in London at the end of the 17th century) and Benjamin Goodison (c.1700-1767); the leading 18th-century cabinet-makers William Vile (c.1700/5-1767), John Cobb (c.1715-1778) and John Bradburn (1750-1781), all of whom supplied carved mahogany furniture to George III; and the firms of Tatham, Bailey and Sanders, and Morel and Seddon, whose very existence was largely due to their work for George IV.
- Although a number of important pieces of continental furniture entered the Collection before his time, it was George IV who brought a totally new character to the furnishing of royal palaces. From the 1780s until his death in 1830, he introduced large quantities of fashionable French furniture. The confiscation and sale of royal and aristocratic property during the French Revolution enabled English collectors, of whom George IV was the most active and successful, to acquire examples by the best 18th-century French cabinet-makers. Thus the Royal Collection contains pieces by Jean-Henri Riesener (1734-1806), Adam Weisweiler (1744-1820) and Martin Carlin (c.1730-1785). George IV’s taste was unusually broad, encompassing 17th-century cabinets by André-Charles Boulle (1642-1732) and the work of living craftsmen. His collection was strongest in pieces dating from the reign of Louis XVI, and included several made for the French king himself. Despite the hostilities between England and France that existed at the time, several French craftsmen, such as Pierre-Philippe Thomire (1751-1843) and François-Honoré-Georges Jacob-Desmalter (1770-1841), supplied George IV directly.
- The greatest concentration of 17th-century furniture in the Royal Collection can today be seen at Hampton Court Palace and Kensington Palace in London, and the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh. These residences are also rich in 16th- and 17th-century tapestries. The furniture of George III and George IV predominates at Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace, which contain many of the original furnishings of George IV’s former London residence, Carlton House. Osborne House retains most of the furniture originally supplied to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.
- The clocks in the Royal Collection remain in use and can be seen in all the palaces. They include important examples made for William IIII by one of the great horological pioneers of the late 17th century, Thomas Tompion (1639-1713), and later pieces made for George III or acquired by George IV. The two monarchs had quite different attitudes to clocks: George III had an unusual understanding of clock mechanisms which informed his acquisitions, whereas his son George IV purchased large numbers of French clocks for their decorative and sculptural qualities.
[edit] Collection Highlights
[edit] Paintings, Prints and Drawings
Dutch School
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- Cuyp, Aelbert - 7 paintings;
- David Teniers the Younger - 4 paintings;
- Hals, Frans - 1 paintings;
- Jan Brueghel the Elder - 1 painting;
- Pieter Brueghel the Elder - 1 painting;
- Pieter de Hooch - 2 paintings;
- Rembrandt van Rijn - 5 paintings;
- Ruisdael, Jacob van - 1 painting;
- Steen, Jan - 7 paintings;
- Vermeer, Johannes - 1 painting;
- Willem van de Velde the Younger - 4 paintings;
- Weenix, Jan - 1 painting;
Flemish School
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- Gossaert, Jan - 1 painting;
- Rubens, Peter Paul - 12 paintings, 5 drawings;
- Van Dyck, Anthony - 26 paintings;
French School
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- Claude Gellée - 5 paintings;
- François Clouet - 3 paintings;
- Gaspard Dughet - 3 paintings;
- Georges de la Tour - 1 painting;
- Monet, Claude - 1 painting;
- Poussin, Nicolas - A large collection of his drawings at Windsor, second only to that in the Louvre;
English School
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- Gainsborough, Thomas - 30 paintings, also a rare mythological work Diana and Actaeon;
- Hogarth, William - 3 paintings;
- Landseer, Sir Edwin - 100 paintings and drawings;
- Lawrence, Thomas - 50 paintings;
- Reynolds, Joshua - 20 paintings;
- Stubbs, George - 18 paintings;
Italian School
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- Allori, Alessandro - 1 painting;
- Angelico, Fra - 1 painting;
- Bellini, Giovanni - 1 painting;
- Bernini, Gianlorenzo - 50 drawings;
- Bronzino, Agnolo - 1 painting;
- Canaletto, (Giovanni Antonio Canal) - Over 50 paintings and 140 drawings, the greatest collection in the world;
- Carlevaris, Luca - 4 paintings;
- Caravaggio, Michelangelo Merisi da - 2 paintings;
- Carracci, Agostino, Annibale and Ludovico - 5 paintings, more than 350 drawings;
- Castiglione, Giovanni Benedetto - 260 drawings;
- Correggio, Antonio Allegri - 2 paintings;
- Daddi, Bernardo - 1 painting;
- Domenichino, Zapieri - 1 painting, 1,700 Domenichinos in thirty-four albums, the Royal Collection’s largest holdings by a single artist;
- Duccio di Buoninsegna - 1 painting;
- Gentile da Fabriano - 1 painting;
- Guercino, (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) - 1 painting, and largest group of Guercino drawings in the world, some 400 sheets, as well as 200 by his assistants and 200 other works;
- Leonardo da Vinci - 600 drawings;
- Lotto, Lorenzo - 1 painting;
- Mantegna, Andrea - 9 canvases known as The Triumphs of Caesar, which can be counted amongst the finest achievements in Italian Renaissance art;
- Michelangelo Buonarroti - 20 drawings;
- Pesellino, Francesco - 1 painting;
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- Raphael, (Raffaello Sanzio) - 8 Paintings, as well as an extensive collection of drawings. There are seven full-size cartoons for the tapestries designed to hang in the Sistine Chapel. During the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Raphael attained the zenith of his reputation, and was widely regarded as the greatest painter in history. Consequently, the Raphael Cartoons have became some of the most famous, and widely imitated, paintings in the world. Since 1865 they have been on loan from the Royal Collection to the V&A.;
- Raffaellino del Garbo - 1 painting;
- Reni, Guido - 1 painting;
- Ricci, Sebastiano - 6 paintings;
- Sacchi, Andrea - 130 drawings;
- Strozzi, Zanobi - 1 painting;
- Tintoretto, Jacopo - 1 painting;
- Titian, Tiziano Vecelli - 1 painting;[1]
- Vasari, Giorgio - 1 painting;
- Veronese, Paolo - 1 painting;
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- Verrio, Antonio - 1 painting;
- Zuccarelli, Francesco - 27 paintings, together with 8 works collaborated with Antonio Visentini;
German School
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- Dürer, Albrecht - 1 painting;
- Holbein, Hans - 7 paintings, 80 drawings and 5 miniatures;
- Lucas Cranach the Elder - 2 paintings
- Zoffany, Johan - 17 paintings;
[edit] Furniture
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- André-Charles Boulle - Several examples
[edit] Decorative Arts
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- Fabergé - One of the greatest collections in the world;
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- Sèvres Porcelain - Greatest collection in the world;
[edit] Management
The Royal Collection Department is an organisation within the Royal Household tasked with the cataloguing, conservation, cleaning, restoration and display of the books, pictures, sculptures and other works of art collected by the British Royal Family.
It is headed by a director who oversees the work of three expert advisors:
The activities of the Royal Collection Department are funded by the Royal Collection Trust, established in 1993, which deals with the purchase and sale of works of art, and which holds copyright on the items of the collection. The Prince of Wales is Chairman, and the Lord Chamberlain for the time being is Deputy Chairman.
The Royal Collection Management Committee has control of the operational aspects of collections policy.
[edit] Gallery
- 'Paintings'
 ALLORI - Judith with the Head of Holofernes (1613) |
 ANGELICO, FRA - Blessing Redeemer (1423) |
 BELLINI - Portrait of a young man (1505-09) |
 CANALETTO - The Bacino di San Marco on Ascension Day (1733-4) |
 CARAVAGGIO - The Calling of Saints Peter and Andrew (1571-1610) |
 CLAUDE - A view of the Roman Campagna from Tivoli, evening (1644-5 |
 CORREGGIO - The Holy Family with Saint Jerome (1517-19) |
 DADDI - The Marriage of the Virgin (1330-42) |
 DUCCIO - Triptych (1305-8) |
 DÜRER - Portrait of Burkard von Speyer (1506) |
 HOLBEIN - 'Noli me tangere' (1524) |
 LOTTO - Andrea Odoni (1527) |
 MANTEGNA - The Triumphs of Caesar, IX - Julius Caesar on his triumphal chariot (1484-92) |
 RAPHAEL - St Paul Preaching in Athens (1515) |
 REMBRANDT - Agatha Bas (1641) |
 RENI - Cleopatra with the Asp (1630) |
 REYNOLDS - The Death of Dido (1781) |
 RICCI - The Adoration of the Magi (1726-30) |
 RUBENS - Pythagoras advocating vegetarianism (1618-20) |
 TENIERS - The Virgin and Child with Saints Stephen, Jerome and Maurice (1656) |
 TINTORETTO - Esther before Ahasuerus (1547-48) |
 TITIAN - Portrait of a Man ('Jacopo Sannazaro') (1511-12) |
 VAN DYCK - Cupid and Psyche (1639-40) |
 VERONESE - The Marriage of Saint Catherine (1580) |
 ZOFFANY - The Tribuna of the Uffizi (1772-78) |
