Royal Collection

Royal Collection. The collection of works of art, particularly paintings and drawings, accumulated by the British royal family over a period of five centuries—from Tudor times to the present day. It is the only great European royal or princely collection to retain its identity, the others having been mainly absorbed into state museums. Sir Oliver Millar, Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures 1972–88, writes that the collection was ‘made by a succession of English Kings, Queens, Consorts and Princes; and it reflects their discernment and prejudice, their bad taste as well as their good, their friendships, diversions, loves, hates, idiosyncrasies and obsessions—and of course a network of dynastic associations—in a uniquely illuminating manner…The commonplace that the worst and most extravagant Kings have the best taste is well borne out by the story of the collection’ (The Queen's Pictures, 1977). In the foreword to The Royal Collection (1992) by Christopher Lloyd (Millar's successor as Surveyor), Prince Charles explains that ‘Although the paintings were purchased over the ages as a means of decorating the homes and official residences of sovereigns, they are not, strictly speaking, the private property of the sovereign. They are, to all intents and purposes, national heirlooms which are an integral part of the institution of monarchy and of which each successive sovereign is the guardian.’

The earliest English monarch of whose collection we have substantial records is Henry VIII (1491–1547; reigned from 1509), but most of the works he owned cannot be certainly identified (the inventories are imprecise) or have been lost or dispersed; they included Raphael's exquisite St George and the Dragon (c.1505, NG, Washington), which is believed to have been a diplomatic gift to his father Henry VII from Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino. Henry VIII spent lavishly on art and understood its propaganda value, but little is known of his personal taste; rather than being a connoisseur, he probably appreciated paintings, like other luxury goods, for their value as status symbols. He employed outstanding foreign artists, above all Holbein, but the Holbeins now in the Royal Collection were acquired after Henry's reign.

Every British monarch since Henry's time has acquired paintings, but only a few of these rulers stand out for their genuine interest in art, above all Charles I (1600–49; reigned from 1625), who assembled one of the choicest picture collections ever created and gave England a new prominence in European cultural affairs. Charles's passion for art began early and he inherited the nucleus of his collection from his elder brother Henry Prince of Wales, who died in 1612 aged only 18. Other works of art came to Charles as diplomatic gifts, but most of his collection was purchased, and the huge amounts he spent on it were one of the sources of the financial difficulties that helped bring about his downfall. His greatest enthusiasm was for Italian Renaissance painting, particularly of the 16th-century Venetian School (he had a superb representation of Titian's work). In 1623 he bought Raphael's magnificent set of cartoons of the Acts of the Apostles for use at the recently founded Mortlake Tapestry Factory (see tapestry), and in 1627 came his greatest coup when he outmanoeuvred rivals to acquire the bulk of the celebrated Gonzaga collection, including Mantegna's series of canvases of the Triumphs of Caesar. Charles also patronized living artists, most notably Rubens and van Dyck, whom he knighted in 1630 and 1632 respectively.

After Charles's execution in 1649 his goods were declared state property and most of his collection was sold, the money raised to be employed for ‘public uses of this Commonwealth’. More than 1,500 pictures and almost 400 pieces of classical sculpture were dispersed over a period of several years, but a few works were retained, including the Raphael tapestry cartoons and the Mantegna Triumphs of Caesar (these are still in the Royal Collection: the Mantegnas at Hampton Court Palace and the Raphaels on loan at the Victoria and Albert Museum). When the monarchy was restored in 1660, Charles II (1630–85) set about recovering as much as he could of his father's collection. He had substantial success with works that had remained in England, but most of the key paintings had gone to foreign buyers including Everard Jabach, Philip IV of Spain, and Archduke Leopold William (for both see Habsburg), and masterpieces that were once in Charles I's collection can now be found in some of the greatest museums of Europe; many of his beloved Titians, for example, are in the Louvre, Paris, the Prado, Madrid, and the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. In spite of these losses, Charles II—in Anthony Blunt's words—‘had a collection of which no king need have been ashamed’. Although he was much less interested in art than his father, Charles was intelligent and cultivated and he added several notable works to the Royal Collection on his own account. It was probably he who acquired the celebrated collection of Leonardo drawings now at Windsor Castle (perhaps advised by his court painter Lely, a great connoisseur of drawings), although they are not recorded in the Royal Collection until 1690, five years after Charles's death.

The next major royal collector was Frederick, Prince of Wales (1707–51), son of George II. The antiquarian Vertue said of Frederick that ‘no prince since King Charles the First took so much pleasure nor observations on works of art or artists’ and he added numerous works to the Royal Collection, notably by 17th-century painters—French, Flemish, and Italian. He also patronized contemporary artists, including Kent, Mercier, and Wootton. Frederick's son George III (1738–1820; reigned from 1760) was a less passionate but highly purposeful collector. His most famous acquisition (in 1762) was the collection of Joseph Smith, the British consul in Venice, with its incomparable group of Canalettos. Smith's collection was rich in drawings as well as paintings, and in the same year that he acquired it George also bought another great collection of drawings—from Cardinal Alessandro Albani. These two acquisitions form a substantial part of the magnificent collection of Old Master drawings (one of the greatest in the world) in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle. The contemporary artists George III particularly admired included Gainsborough, Ramsay, West, and Zoffany, and he played a significant role in the creation of the Royal Academy, funding it from its foundation in 1768 until it became self-supporting in 1780.

George's son George IV (1762–1830; regent from 1811 because of his father's illness, reigned from 1820) ranks second only to Charles I among British royal collectors—for reckless extravagance as well as for refined taste. Oliver Millar writes that ‘Perhaps more than any other English royal connoisseur, he had a feeling for the look of a room as a whole and for the part a picture could play in its design.’ He constantly altered the arrangement of the paintings and other works of art in his homes, and he had Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle remodelled with special provision for displaying pictures. In 1826 and 1827 he lent more than 100 paintings for exhibition at the British Institution in London. His main field of interest as a collector was 17th-century Dutch and Flemish painting, and his purchases included two masterpieces particularly associated with Charles I: Rubens's Landscape with St George and the Dragon (in which St George and the princess are idealized portraits of Charles and his wife, Henrietta Maria) and van Dyck's triple portrait of Charles I (which had been sent to Rome in 1636 to serve as the model for a marble bust by Bernini). Among contemporary artists, George especially favoured Lawrence.

George's niece Victoria (1819–1901; reigned from 1837) and her husband Prince Albert (1819–61) were the last of the major figures in shaping the character of the Royal Collection. Most of the hundreds of pictures they bought were by contemporary artists (Landseer and Winterhalter were among their favourites, and Frith commented that ‘they knew quite as much about art as most painters’ and that ‘their treatment of artists displayed a generous kindness delightful to experience’). In a very different field, Albert was a pioneer in the appreciation of early Italian painting; most of the Royal Collection's Italian pictures dating from before 1500 were acquired in the period between his marriage to Victoria in 1840 and his early death in 1861.

Under Victoria and Albert the administration of the Royal Collection was greatly improved and it was made more accessible to the public (Hampton Court was open to visitors ‘free and without restriction’ on certain days). Charles I had been the first monarch to appoint an administrator specifically to look after his pictures— Abraham van der Doort (c.1580–1640), a Dutch-born wax modeller and drawing master. His successors in the post of Surveyor of the King's (or Queen's) Pictures included several well-known painters, among them George Knapton, Benjamin West, and Richard Redgrave, who was appointed by Victoria and Albert in 1857 and who ‘deserves without question to be enshrined in the annals of the collection as its greatest and most admirable servant’ ( Oliver Millar). In addition to achieving a great deal in cleaning and restoration, Redgrave made a manuscript inventory of the entire royal picture collection that was much more detailed and accurate than anything that had gone before (each description was accompanied by a photograph of the picture—a pioneering use of the medium in art history).

Redgrave resigned in 1880 because of declining eyesight. His successors have mainly been distinguished art historians, among them Kenneth Clark and Anthony Blunt. It was during Blunt's surveyorship, in 1962, that the Queen's Gallery was opened at Buckingham Palace to hold exhibitions of works from the Royal Collection (the gallery has subsequently been much enlarged, reopening in its new form in 2002). Buckingham Palace itself was first opened to the public in 1993, and works from the Royal Collection can also regularly be seen in other royal residences, including Hampton Court and Kensington Palace in London, Windsor Castle, and Holyroodhouse, Edinburgh. A second Queen's Gallery opened in Edinburgh in 2002.