Prince Albert’s Taste
Queen Victoria’s Consort was a man of exceptional intelligence; among his many interests, writes Winslow Ames, was the collection of early German and Italian paintings and the encouragement of contemporary artists.
In the early years of her marriage, Queen Victoria’s diary often portrayed her husband as battling against bad contemporary British taste. Of course, she was not a detached observer; but aside from the question, ‘Whence did she get this idea?’ there is the problem of what taste he was combating and what taste he recommended as a replacement.
The Queen also described the Prince’s taste more than once as inherited from his father. The taste of Ernest, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, is clear from the watercolours of his interiors: it was based upon the classic elegancies of Goethe, but brought up to date by Empire styles in furniture, and slightly romanticized by the buildings that the Duke inherited; a simple, rather severe taste that makes one feel a little better about him, a taste with a few whims of colour or scale but without the coarseness, even the suggestion of cruelty, that one might expect.
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