Chiswick Portrait Of Europe's Royal Family Goes On Display
'Lady Portman' from ITV's Victoria will read extracts from Queen's diary
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A Who’s Who of Victorian England will be unveiled at Chiswick House this week for the opening night of the Chiswick Book Festival. The print of the painting ‘The Royal Garden Party at Chiswick’, by Louis William Desanges, shows Queen Victoria at Chiswick House in 1875 with her family and 300 guests, assembled under the famous Cedars of Lebanon.
“Queen Victoria visited Chiswick House on several occasions around that time” says Torin Douglas, director of the Chiswick Book Festival. “Her son the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) had taken over the lease and often held parties there. According to Gillian Clegg’s history of Chiswick House and Gardens, she was not amused!”
Queen Victoria wrote to her son in 1869: “There is a great fear lest you should have gay parties at Chiswick instead of going there to pass the Sunday, a day which is rightly considered one of rest, quietly for your repose with your dear children.”
This detail from the portrait (see above) shows Queen Victoria sitting with some of her nine children and their husbands and wives, all members of the Royal houses of Europe. The future George V is leaning against her lap in a sailor suit, and the Prince of Wales is standing to her right in a top hat. To the left of the picture, holding a top hat, is the red-bearded Frederick, Imperial Crown Prince of Prussia, who would become the German emperor. He is with his wife, the Queen’s eldest daughter, known as Vicky.
Just behind the Prince of Wales is the Rt Hon William Gladstone, and elsewhere in the picture are dozens of dukes, duchesses, earls and princesses. An accompanying key, which will also be displayed, identifies over 200 of the guests.
30 years earlier, in the period shown by the ITV series Victoria, the young Queen Victoria wrote in her diary that she enjoyed her visits to Chiswick: “The house is beautiful and in the Italian style – we walked in the garden & pleasure grounds, which are beautifully laid out.”
In 1842 the Queen visited Chiswick with her companion Lady Portman, who is portrayed in the series by west London actress Anna Wilson Jones (pictured here in the role).
The writer of Victoria, Daisy Goodwin, and its historical adviser AN Wilson, will be speaking and taking questions at Chiswick House on the evening of Thursday September 15th and Anna Wilson Jones will read extracts from the Queen’s diaries.
The exhibition, ‘Queen Victoria in Chiswick’, will also include extracts from Victoria’s diaries, cuttings from The Times and the Illustrated London News and analysis by local historians.
The exhibition opens at 6pm on Thursday September 15 2016, in the Burlington Pavilion at Chiswick House. Books and drinks will be on sale and the talk begins at 7pm. Tickets cost £10 in aid of reading charities and are on sale at the Festival website, where you can also read the full programme.
This year's Chiswick Book Festival will be the biggest ever with eighty authors participating events from 15 September.
Since it started the Chiswick Book Festival has raised more than £50,000 for St Michael & All Angels Church, which hosts the Festival, and its chosen charities, which support reading and literacy. This year the Book Festival will continue to support RNIB Talking Books Service and Books for Children , InterAct Stroke Support and Doorstep Library.
The Festival is based at St Michael & All Angels Church and Parish Hall, with other events at Chiswick House; Arts Ed’s Webber Andrew Lloyd Foundation Theatre; the Tabard Theatre, Chiswick Library and Waterstones Chiswick, who run the on-site Festival bookshop.
September 10, 2016
