Palaces and Pleasuredomes Art, Passion & Power: The Story of the Royal Collection


Palaces and Pleasuredomes

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Have you ever wondered how you'd impress a king?

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If you're at Buckingham Palace,

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and the King of Spain is coming to dinner,

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the first thing you do is get out your best tableware.

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In particular, you polish up the Grand Service,

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one of the greatest treasures of the Royal Collection

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and, then, you let it do its work.

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The Grand Service,

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4,000 pieces, silver-gilt, 25 years in the making -

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far more than table ornament.

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Many of these pieces could really be described as sculpture.

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What an astonishing thing!

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It's a national monument.

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Look closer and there's marvel in every detail.

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Clam-shaped tureens,

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candelabra with piping forms.

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It all reflects the personality of the man who commissioned it -

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George IV, a king for whom too much was never enough

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and who was responsible for so much of the trappings of the modern

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monarchy. Before him, royal ceremony was polite theatre.

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After him, it was opera.

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I'm exploring the Royal Collection,

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that extraordinary accumulation

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of art and objects owned by the monarchy

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and I've reached the late 18th and early 19th centuries

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and the most romantic royal collectors in history.

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There's George IV but also the royal couple who closely followed him -

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Queen Victoria and Prince Albert,

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for whom art served almost as a marital aid.

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This is a fantastically accomplished piece of high Victorian soft porn.

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Through their collections, we see them as lovers, rulers,

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diplomats and - sometimes - flawed individuals.

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But they purchased and commissioned

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some of the greatest works of art of all time.

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Between them, George IV,

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Queen Victoria and Albert turned the first half of the 19th century into

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the greatest age of royal collecting since the time of Charles I

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and, unlike Charles's collection,

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theirs have remained largely intact into the present

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and, in fact, when the monarchy today wants to put on a show,

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it's THEIR stuff that's brought out, polished and set on the table.

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"In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

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"A stately pleasure dome decree

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"Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

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"Through caverns measureless to man

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"Down to a sunless sea."

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Coleridge, in his opium dreams,

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merely wrote about the great palace of an Oriental potentate.

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But George IV, whose name I would add to any roll call

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of great romantics, went one better - he built his own.

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The Royal Pavilion in Brighton -

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a self-portrait in stone of a man

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who lived his whole life as if it were a work of art.

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A pleasure dome, indeed.

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So, welcome to the house that George built.

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Welcome to the house of fun!

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Everything in here is pure theatre.

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Look at this wonderful, Chinese-style chandelier

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designed by George's interior decorators, the Craces.

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And these rather wonderful Qing dynasty figurines,

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they give you a little hint as to George's mischievous sense of fun.

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They nod at you, and it's said that George used to like to do that

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to all of these figurines just before guests arrived,

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so that when they came in to this long gallery,

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they'd do a double-take and think, "Did that sculpture just move?

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"Is it alive? Who knows?"

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These figures, like many other objects here,

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are owned by the Queen

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and are on long term loan from the Royal Collection.

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The walls have been papered so that they resemble a garden -

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what looks like marble is actually just paint...

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..and, if you continue on to this rather wonderful staircase...

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..this looks like bamboo but, actually, it's made of wrought iron,

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whereas this, the handrail, is mahogany carved to look like bamboo.

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How perverse is that?

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But all of that, the long gallery, is really

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an avenue of anticipation,

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a build-up, a build-up to the great climax,

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the coup de theatre,

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the piece of resistance, which is the banqueting room.

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The richest, most luxuriously decorated space

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created in all of 19th-century England.

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It's bewildering, breathtaking.

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The designer was a man called Robert Jones.

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If only he were alive today,

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just imagine how Elton John's house would look.

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Fantastic!

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That is the largest, most splendid and extraordinary chandelier.

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It's held in place by this astonishing Jabberwock of a dragon.

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The pavilion began as a spare and trim neoclassical building but it

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expanded in tandem with the royal waistline,

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becoming more outlandish as George put ever more distance

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between himself and the ordered, 18th-century world of his youth,

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dominated by his father, George III.

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Think of George III, collector of clocks,

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a man of the Enlightenment, obsessed with order, decorum, rules,

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punctuality. Well!

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George IV just says no to all of that

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and I think that's what this building symbolises

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more than anything else. It's a great act of rebellion

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against everything that his father stood for.

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In here, underneath that glittering dome,

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in this fantasy world, he can enjoy his latest fling,

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open ten or 20 bottles of very good Bordeaux and time would stand still.

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He would be free.

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Freedom came at a price.

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George's excessive consumption wasn't nearly matched by his income.

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Parliament was constantly bailing him out,

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even forcing him to marry in exchange for writing off hundreds of

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thousands of pounds of debt.

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George has been remembered as extravagant and profligate,

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a thoroughly rotten apple in the barrel of monarchy

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but is that fair?

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Yes, he spent fortunes and, no, he didn't always pay his bills.

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But the truth is that if you added up the value of all of the objects

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that he bought and brought into the Royal Collection,

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you'd find that for every £1,000 he spent, you'd have £10 million

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of value in modern money.

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As Prince of Wales,

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George commissioned a series of paintings from George Stubbs.

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You could pick up a Stubbs for around 60 quid in the 1790s.

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They're worth up to £20 million these days

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and George bought over a dozen.

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And these are two of the real pinnacles.

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I love this one.

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It's a sort of picture of George IV who isn't there.

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What it shows us is the preparations being made

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for him to take a trip in his carriage.

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This particular type of carriage is known as a phaeton.

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Here's his head coachman.

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The horses have been groomed and he's calming one of them,

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holding him by the bridle.

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He's a man called Samuel Thomas -

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stout, with his red face and an expression of infinite patience.

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He's a man used to waiting for his master.

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Down here, we've got George's rather mischievous dog, Fino.

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Trust George to have a dog named after a type of sherry -

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trying his best, as he rears up, trying to startle the second horse,

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who, for the moment, isn't playing along.

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It's a wonderful picture.

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In the other painting, we see George himself,

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out riding, in London,

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by the side of the Serpentine.

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He's in Hyde Park. He's multitasking.

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He's giving his horse some exercise

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while walking his dogs at the same time.

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What's most interesting is his costume.

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The buff trouser and navy blue frock coat

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were the uniform of the radical

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Whig opposition, champions of liberty,

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adversaries of the Government of King George III.

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This was George's way of saying that "I'm sympathetic to the Whig cause,

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"and I'm not entirely unsympathetic to the ideas of that group

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"over the Channel, the French revolutionaries."

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If you look at the date of the picture down here,

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you can see it was painted in 1791,

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so this is before Madame Guillotine has come on the scene.

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It's still safe, if you like,

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to feel some sympathy for the revolutionary cause.

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It's definitely a picture that shows how much like Blake,

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like Wordsworth,

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he's thinking about himself, as someone living in a new age.

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The execution of the French king two years later put an end to George's

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flirtations with radicalism.

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But France, or specifically French aristocratic and royal taste,

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would be a constant throughout his life,

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and on display at his main residence as Prince of Wales -

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Carlton House.

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Nothing of Carlton House remains at the bottom of Regent Street

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where it once stood but you can witness its splendour

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in a series of watercolours in the Royal Collection.

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Visitors pass through an entrance at Pall Mall and then into principal

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rooms that included the rose satin drawing room hung with silk,

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and decorated with portraits of Rubens and van Dyck,

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the vast crimson drawing room with a carpet of light blue velvet

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and a magnificent throne room.

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Carlton House was torn down in George's lifetime,

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so what happened to the things that were in it?

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Have a guess.

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And if you really want to see George IV's collection

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at its very best, you have to come to this royal residence

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tucked away in the heart of London -

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Buckingham Palace.

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This was another of George's building projects.

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The state rooms are decorated with many of his sensuous furnishings.

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It's so camp here, so OTT,

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so French,

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that you have to pinch yourself to remember

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that you're at the centre of the British state.

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Royal Collection Trust's Rufus Bird

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is responsible for the Palace furniture.

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So, this is a sofa or a canape, as it's called in French,

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made in the late 18th century in France and is one of three sets.

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One set was supplied to Louis XVI, another to

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Marie Antoinette and this, the third set,

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supplied to George, Prince of Wales.

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The French furniture maker must be very pleased

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in the immediate post-Revolutionary period, I mean,

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suddenly to get a commission from George must help a bit.

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-Yes.

-Who was his principal furniture dealer?

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So, he used this guy called Dominique Daguerre,

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who is a very important person

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for creating some of these assemblages in Carlton House

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and he is a marchand-mercier,

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a sort of person who could bring together craftsmen

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and create a work of art.

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Were any of these things brought by him, or all of these things?

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Yeah, pretty much everything, actually.

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I want to show you something here. If you have a look underneath here,

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I'll move this out the way and if we look underneath, you can see...

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-Oh, there's a sort of sticker.

-Yes, there's a label. It says,

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"Monsieur Daguerre. Canape pour le sallon."

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So, there we have.

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-For the removal man. So he knows where to put it.

-Exactly.

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-He knows exactly where to put it.

-In Carlton House.

-In Carlton House.

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Daguerre received £14,500 in a single year

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for fitting out Carlton House,

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supplying items such as this cabinet.

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Wow! It's just fantastic.

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The panels are pietra dura,

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so that's the Italian inlaid stone technique

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which you can almost not believe when you look at that tulip.

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And the other one I love is this one.

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I mean, it's just... I've never seen anything like it!

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This feels like a cornucopia in the form of a piece of furniture.

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-It sort of spills out into the room, almost.

-It does, yeah.

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This three-dimensionality here of these plaques is incredible.

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When it was made, around 1787,

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this belonged to a famous opera singer called Madame La Guerre

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who died very young of a very exciting life.

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She died of a very exciting life! OK.

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Let's draw a veil over that.

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Poor Madame La Guerre. But it gives you a sense,

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-he really is buying the very, very top-end stuff from France.

-Yes.

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In the white drawing room is one of George's greatest purchases

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from late in his life,

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a writing desk by the furniture maker Jean-Henri Riesener,

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supplier to the French court in the years before the revolution.

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So, when George IV bought this,

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it was sold to him as having come from Versailles.

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There is nothing on this, and we've looked,

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that suggests that it was in Versailles.

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There are no markings on it whatsoever.

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Do you think it was Versailles, yourself? What's your hunch?

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Yeah, I do. There's two others of this exact type,

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one of which has got emblems of the sisters of Louis XV.

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So, it's almost like in the Soviet era,

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-where they used to take people out of photographs.

-Yes, yes, exactly.

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They've taken...the royal coat of arms has been removed,

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so that the object is no longer tainted

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by the smell of a fallen monarchy.

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-Yeah, well, it was then saleable.

-What does it do?

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Well, I was just going to say, would you like to have a look inside?

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-I'd love to.

-I'm just going to don my white gloves.

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-I love pieces of furniture that open...

-Yeah.

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..and then reveal secrets within.

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I'm a sucker for it. Here you can...

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Well, if you're French, you can write your billet-doux,

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and arrange your liaisons dangereuses and if you're George,

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I suppose you might write some letters.

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There's a reading slope.

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Wow. That's brilliant!

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This is just what I need. That's so clever.

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Yeah.

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One of the themes running through George's collection is very much

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this connection with the ancien regime.

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What do you think it is that obsesses and fascinates George?

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I think he's interested in this idea of the romantic, lost collections,

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and then of course, come the revolution,

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they were guillotined and then the collections were dispersed.

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So, there's this sense of romance.

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Now, there's also a practical side, because, of course,

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the collections are on the market and so he's able to buy them,

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and not everybody was capable of doing that.

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Of course, George didn't just buy furniture.

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Some of the very greatest paintings in the Royal Collection were bought

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by him, including many here at Buckingham Palace.

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And, yet again, he had those revolutionaries

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over the Channel to thank.

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To paraphrase Wordsworth, "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,"

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but to be a young art collector was very heaven.

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The great, French, aristocratic picture collections

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were brought to London

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and they went under the hammer and who was there to buy them?

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The future George IV, the Prince of Wales,

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the right man in the right place at the right time.

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As French armies overran the low countries,

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many Dutch collections also found their way

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to the only stable country in Europe - Britain.

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With his connoisseur's eye,

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George snaffled up a collection of Dutch and Flemish masters

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that's simply one of the greatest in the world.

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And what a picture this is, by Cuyp.

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A picture that's all about light and the depiction of light.

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Look at that sky with its shredded cloudage, lit by the evening sun,

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the silhouettes of birds flying through the sky.

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The peasant on his mule, homeward bound.

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Look at all this. Look at this foreground.

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The foliage speckled by light.

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He's actually created that by flicking the canvas.

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It's almost like a Chinese technique,

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and what's really interesting is that we know that Constable,

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the great English Romantic,

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he looked at Cuyp, he was obsessed by Cuyp

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and he did exactly the same thing.

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He created this thin. He called it his snow, "my snow,"

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and he flicked paint onto the surface of the canvas

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and that was really the fundamental origins

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of expressionist approaches to painting -

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ultimately, it then goes into expressionism and Jackson Pollock

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is the perfect example of it.

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So, this is really, at a technical level, a fantastically

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adventurous piece of painting.

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It's a real masterpiece.

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Again, one of the very greatest paintings by Cuyp.

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George finally became king aged 57, in 1820...

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..and, at first, it seemed as if little had changed.

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This was a spendaholic monarch

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who didn't consider his coronation banquet complete

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without the presence of a knight on horseback.

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# Zadok the priest

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# And Nathan the prophet

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# Anointed... #

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But I think that, in his maturity,

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George did finally work out how to channel his natural showmanship

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to a higher purpose - the stabilising power of monarchy.

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In 1822, George went to Edinburgh

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and proved once and for all his mastery of royal spectacle.

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Scotland was a land where memories of the brutal suppression

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of the 1745 Jacobite uprising was still raw.

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No Hanoverian king had ever dared to set foot north of the border.

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A central set piece of the visit was the king's arrival at the old royal

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Palace of Holyroodhouse,

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an event important enough to be commemorated by an eyewitness -

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the leading Scottish painter, David Wilkie, in a work

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that I'm being shown by Royal Collection Trust's Deborah Clarke.

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Aha, here it is.

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A real piece of history.

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He's painted George looking rather pale and I've always wondered

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if that wasn't something to do with the fact

0:21:490:21:52

that he's just got off a boat.

0:21:520:21:53

Apparently, the weather was very bad and he's a little bit seasick,

0:21:530:21:56

or perhaps I'm just imagining that!

0:21:560:21:58

It might have had something to do with it but also,

0:21:580:22:01

it was the king who commissioned this picture

0:22:010:22:04

and had a say in what Wilkie

0:22:040:22:06

was to paint, because Wilkie was determined to paint something for

0:22:060:22:10

the king. The king asked him to paint a scene from the visit

0:22:100:22:14

and he couldn't quite work out what to do and it was the king who said,

0:22:140:22:17

"I want to be shown at the palace of my ancestors."

0:22:170:22:21

And the person who orchestrated it all is Walter Scott,

0:22:210:22:24

who I'm expecting to see among these people

0:22:240:22:27

but I can't work out which one of them he might be.

0:22:270:22:30

You can just see him by the front door of the palace.

0:22:300:22:33

He's this rather sort of shadowy figure in profile.

0:22:330:22:36

Looking rather medieval, I suppose, as you might expect.

0:22:360:22:40

Absolutely. He was given three weeks to arrange the visit,

0:22:400:22:45

so not a great deal of time

0:22:450:22:47

and decided to really go for it, go for all the pageantry.

0:22:470:22:50

Fascinating. So, let's look at some of the other details,

0:22:500:22:52

cos there are one or two things that puzzle me.

0:22:520:22:55

I can see the pageantry that you talk about - Scott's pageantry -

0:22:550:22:58

those men on horseback wearing their splendid costumes

0:22:580:23:01

but, behind them, there looks to be a kind of

0:23:010:23:05

fire blazing in the distance. What would that be?

0:23:050:23:07

Well, what you have to remember, in those days,

0:23:070:23:10

there was no way of knowing exactly when the king was due to arrive.

0:23:100:23:14

People were on tenterhooks for days.

0:23:140:23:17

Even Wilkie himself wrote, "I must wait in the city.

0:23:170:23:20

"I can't leave cos I don't know when the king is due to arrive."

0:23:200:23:23

-So, are you saying that fire is a beacon?

-It's a beacon.

0:23:230:23:26

-Brilliant!

-So, finally, he'd arrived and the beacons were lit.

0:23:260:23:29

Walter Scott marketed George as a hero from one of his novels.

0:23:320:23:37

One very lucky Edinburgh clothier received a commission for £1,354

0:23:370:23:44

to kit the king out in a fantastical version of Highland costume.

0:23:440:23:49

The typically understated accessories

0:23:490:23:52

still remain in the Royal Collection

0:23:520:23:54

and when David Wilkie painted George in the outfit, he said the king

0:23:540:23:58

reminded him of a giant sausage in tartan.

0:23:580:24:02

Nevertheless, the visit was a great success.

0:24:030:24:06

It was said a seventh of the entire population of Scotland

0:24:070:24:11

turned out to greet the king.

0:24:110:24:13

And when I read about the hubbub,

0:24:140:24:16

I'm reminded of today's royal pageantry,

0:24:160:24:19

the weddings and christenings

0:24:190:24:21

that are such a part of our national life.

0:24:210:24:24

And the crowds weren't just in the streets, they were up there -

0:24:240:24:28

every window, every balcony was packed.

0:24:280:24:30

So much banner and flag-waving

0:24:300:24:33

was there that the walls themselves seemed

0:24:330:24:36

to ripple and one lady, watching it all from a first-floor window,

0:24:360:24:42

wrote in her diary that "The most remarkable thing is perhaps not

0:24:420:24:46

"the plump gentleman in his coach,

0:24:460:24:48

"but the multitude seething around him."

0:24:480:24:52

It's as if the crowd had itself become the spectacle.

0:24:520:24:56

Scotland had been brought together to see its own togetherness.

0:24:560:25:01

400 miles south, a great symbol of British royalty

0:25:080:25:11

was getting an upgrade.

0:25:110:25:13

In the 1820s,

0:25:140:25:16

nearly £1 million was spent turning the draughty castle at Windsor

0:25:160:25:21

into a Gothic redoubt from the pages of Walter Scott.

0:25:210:25:24

This was George's statement of the enduring and stabilising power

0:25:250:25:30

of monarchy.

0:25:300:25:32

The Round Tower at Windsor -

0:25:320:25:34

its silhouette has appeared on a million postcards.

0:25:340:25:37

It's become the trademark, almost, of the monarchy -

0:25:370:25:40

perhaps the nation itself

0:25:400:25:42

and, yet, it didn't always dominate the skyline quite like this.

0:25:420:25:45

It was George IV who had it extended upwards by 30 feet,

0:25:450:25:50

treating it almost like one of those wonderful sculptural candelabra in

0:25:500:25:55

the Grand Service - something that could be adjusted at the royal whim.

0:25:550:25:59

Outside, Windsor is a castle.

0:26:040:26:06

Inside, it's a palace.

0:26:060:26:09

And the whole thing is a kind of temple to British royalty -

0:26:090:26:13

an institution that has survived the decades of revolution

0:26:130:26:17

and emerged victorious from war with France.

0:26:170:26:20

And at the centre of the castle is a collaboration

0:26:220:26:26

with the portrait painter Sir Thomas Lawrence,

0:26:260:26:29

a contemporary of Turner and Constable,

0:26:290:26:31

and just as stormily romantic.

0:26:310:26:33

Lawrence made his sitters seem lit by flashes of lightning.

0:26:350:26:39

He made them beautiful, heroic.

0:26:390:26:42

He did this with George in his coronation portrait.

0:26:440:26:47

And in Windsor Castle's Waterloo Chamber,

0:26:490:26:52

he did the same en masse for the restored monarchies of Europe.

0:26:520:26:56

This is the Waterloo Chamber,

0:26:590:27:03

a great hall of heroes.

0:27:030:27:05

Whenever come in here I feel as though

0:27:050:27:08

a soundtrack ought to be playing,

0:27:080:27:10

perhaps Beethoven's 5th Symphony.

0:27:100:27:12

HE SINGS 5TH SYMPHONY FATE MOTIF

0:27:120:27:18

Up there, at the centre, holding the sword of state, we have Wellington,

0:27:180:27:25

the great hero, the great hero of the Battle of Waterloo,

0:27:250:27:29

the great hero in the British victory over France, the old enemy -

0:27:290:27:34

Napoleon and all that.

0:27:340:27:35

That's what this space was designed to celebrate.

0:27:350:27:39

On the left, Platov, his Russian ally.

0:27:400:27:43

To the right, Blucher, commanding the Prussian forces,

0:27:430:27:48

standing on the battlefield, smoke, lightning, storm clouds.

0:27:480:27:53

There's the smell of gunpowder in the air.

0:27:530:27:56

I think if George IV could've had smoke machines in the room,

0:27:560:28:01

he would have had them.

0:28:010:28:02

How does the space work?

0:28:020:28:04

Well, up there, the military heroes.

0:28:040:28:07

Down here, smaller portraits of leading statesman.

0:28:070:28:12

And, here, on the side walls,

0:28:130:28:17

you've got these monumental portraits

0:28:170:28:19

of the crowned heads of the day.

0:28:190:28:21

There we have the Emperor of Russia.

0:28:210:28:23

Over here, we've got George IV himself.

0:28:230:28:28

It's the monarchs, of course, rather than the generals

0:28:280:28:31

and the statesman who are the real stars of the show.

0:28:310:28:34

For this is a statement by a sometime radical

0:28:340:28:37

that monarchy will triumph in the end.

0:28:370:28:40

And it's all been done in a very British way.

0:28:410:28:44

The British had never liked that kind of huge, trumpeting,

0:28:460:28:51

self-declarative type of painting, the battle scene.

0:28:510:28:55

They'd always preferred the portrait

0:28:550:28:58

and I think George IV's brilliance, with Thomas Lawrence, his painter,

0:28:580:29:02

was to turn the portrait into a version of the victory painting,

0:29:020:29:08

to imply the victory in the setting, in the scene,

0:29:080:29:12

in the smoke, in the romantic ambience,

0:29:120:29:15

while still remaining true to the portrait mould.

0:29:150:29:18

For Thomas Lawrence, all this meant an arduous

0:29:180:29:22

series of painting campaigns.

0:29:220:29:24

But the biggest adventure of all took him to Rome

0:29:240:29:28

and resulted in the creation of THIS picture -

0:29:280:29:32

his masterpiece - the portrait of Pope Pius VII.

0:29:320:29:37

The handling of the fabrics is tremendous.

0:29:380:29:42

Look at the way that he's captured that watered silk.

0:29:420:29:45

The papal slippers.

0:29:450:29:48

No less a figure than Eugene Delacroix,

0:29:480:29:50

the leading French Romantic painter,

0:29:500:29:53

he looked at this picture and he said,

0:29:530:29:56

"Well, gone are the days when we in France

0:29:560:29:59

"ask if the English have any painters."

0:29:590:30:01

This is a masterpiece.

0:30:010:30:03

Lawrence is a master.

0:30:030:30:04

It's a diamond of a painting.

0:30:040:30:07

It's a really special moment.

0:30:070:30:08

This is a moment when British painting is set on a new footing

0:30:080:30:12

in Europe, and British painting actually influences

0:30:120:30:15

continental European painting in a way that had never happened before.

0:30:150:30:20

So, I think, in so many ways, you really have to see George IV

0:30:200:30:25

as one of the great patrons in the entire history of the royal family.

0:30:250:30:29

I certainly think he's...

0:30:290:30:31

There is no-one after Charles I

0:30:310:30:33

who's more significant than George IV.

0:30:330:30:36

After George IV died in 1830,

0:30:390:30:42

The Times dammed him for his decadence,

0:30:420:30:45

saying that he'd contributed more to the demoralisation of society

0:30:450:30:49

than any prince recorded in the pages of history.

0:30:490:30:53

But it was George who left behind the palaces, the castles,

0:30:540:30:58

and the objects that we most identify with the modern monarchy.

0:30:580:31:02

To collect great art

0:31:030:31:05

you need to understand how it speaks to all of us.

0:31:050:31:09

Is it any wonder that the king who left behind so many treasures

0:31:090:31:13

was also the most flawed and perhaps the most human of them all?

0:31:130:31:17

The monarch who would build on George's legacy

0:31:210:31:24

was his niece Victoria, who came to the throne in 1837.

0:31:240:31:28

She's usually cast as louche, old George's uptight opposite,

0:31:280:31:33

but she shared his passion for collecting,

0:31:330:31:36

while keeping within her means.

0:31:360:31:38

And she didn't just use art to define her reign,

0:31:380:31:41

she also used it to define her marriage.

0:31:410:31:45

The union of Victoria and Albert was an arranged marriage

0:31:450:31:48

which actually worked.

0:31:480:31:50

They were first cousins and they met just a few days

0:31:500:31:54

before Victoria's 17th birthday.

0:31:540:31:57

She fondly remembered looking at some drawings on a sofa

0:31:570:32:01

and feeling very much at home.

0:32:010:32:03

In 1839, her second meeting with Albert,

0:32:040:32:08

she noted how beautiful his blue eyes were,

0:32:080:32:12

how noble and exquisite his nose was.

0:32:120:32:18

She was touched by his little moustachios

0:32:180:32:22

and, even more so, by his tiny little whiskers.

0:32:220:32:25

And there they all are captured in this beautiful,

0:32:250:32:30

very early depiction of Albert by Victoria.

0:32:300:32:35

He's every inch...

0:32:350:32:37

..the dashing hero of romantic fantasy.

0:32:380:32:43

Think Byron, think Heathcliff, think Mr Darcy.

0:32:430:32:48

Right next to that drawing is Albert's depiction of Victoria,

0:32:500:32:56

rather more learned, much more deferential.

0:32:560:33:00

The extent which making art was part of their marriage,

0:33:000:33:05

their happy marriage, is exemplified by two images here -

0:33:050:33:09

a watercolour and a drawing.

0:33:090:33:11

A watercolour by Albert, drawing by Victoria.

0:33:110:33:15

They're side by side in the album.

0:33:150:33:17

They were done on the same trip, a voyage round the isle of Jersey.

0:33:170:33:22

Albert's rather smouldering, romantic sunset scene,

0:33:220:33:27

Victoria's rather precise rendering of Norman Point.

0:33:270:33:32

But I think what they give you between them

0:33:320:33:35

is this sense of Victoria and Albert together

0:33:350:33:38

looking at nature, looking at the world, depicting it.

0:33:380:33:40

They make art together

0:33:400:33:42

the way some married couples play Scrabble together.

0:33:420:33:45

For Albert, learning how to make art was the best way to understand it.

0:33:450:33:50

He took lessons in lithography, chalk drawing and etching.

0:33:500:33:55

And here we've actually got Albert's very own etching tools,

0:33:570:34:02

preserved almost as saint's relics here in Windsor.

0:34:020:34:08

And, with these tools, he and Victoria

0:34:080:34:12

embarked on a new adventure in art.

0:34:120:34:16

Namely, an adventure in etching.

0:34:160:34:18

And, very conveniently, they inscribed the images,

0:34:180:34:21

these etchings, in such a way that you know who did what.

0:34:210:34:25

So, here, Victoria invented the image and Albert drew and etched it.

0:34:250:34:31

And to give you some idea of just how many of these etchings were made

0:34:330:34:38

and printed, this entire album is full of them,

0:34:380:34:43

and this is just one of many albums, one per year,

0:34:430:34:47

which they filled with these images.

0:34:470:34:50

And it's open at a page which shows Waldman,

0:34:500:34:54

their characterful dachshund,

0:34:540:34:58

hoping, I think, hoping, hoping, hoping for his next meal.

0:34:580:35:03

In Victoria and Albert's marriage, art held a special place.

0:35:080:35:12

It was somewhere they could both meet as equals.

0:35:120:35:15

This is best seen at their retreat on the Isle of Wight, Osborne House,

0:35:170:35:22

a building that Albert, in effect, designed.

0:35:220:35:25

Artists came and went with ease here.

0:35:270:35:30

And, inside, his and Victoria's personal collections

0:35:300:35:33

were on display.

0:35:330:35:35

Items that might easily have been lost in George IV's echoey palaces.

0:35:350:35:41

This is the grand corridor at Osborne House

0:35:450:35:48

and there's no better place to really see, feel, understand

0:35:480:35:53

the love that both Albert and Victoria had for art.

0:35:530:35:57

Above all, perhaps, the art of sculpture

0:35:570:36:00

because this is really their private sculpture gallery.

0:36:000:36:03

Albert had been on the Grand Tour.

0:36:030:36:05

He'd visited Rome, he'd experienced the great masterpieces of antiquity

0:36:050:36:09

and he loved to be surrounded by classical images.

0:36:090:36:12

Look, inset into the walls are these little plaster casts,

0:36:120:36:15

based on the Elgin Marbles, all around we see heroes and heroines.

0:36:150:36:19

But this is more than just a collection of objects.

0:36:190:36:23

It's also a collection of gifts

0:36:230:36:25

because nearly every single sculpture in here

0:36:250:36:29

was presented either by Victoria to Albert,

0:36:290:36:32

or from Albert to Victoria.

0:36:320:36:34

Victoria and Albert gave gifts with great ceremony.

0:36:360:36:40

Birthday and Christmas tables were laid

0:36:400:36:43

and on them were elaborate displays of art,

0:36:430:36:46

garlanded with bouquets of flowers.

0:36:460:36:49

The whole display would then be recorded as a watercolour,

0:36:490:36:52

a work of art in itself.

0:36:520:36:54

That's quite a birthday present.

0:37:010:37:04

1852.

0:37:040:37:05

Queen Victoria gives this picture to Prince Albert

0:37:050:37:11

and it's hung in the room here at Osborne where,

0:37:110:37:15

side by side, they go about the business of running the Empire.

0:37:150:37:20

This is where they sit to go through the dispatch boxes every day

0:37:200:37:24

and that is the picture that Victoria thinks should be on the wall.

0:37:240:37:28

It's basically a voyeur painting,

0:37:280:37:31

lots and lots of female naked flesh

0:37:310:37:34

being spied by that man up in the corner.

0:37:340:37:37

But the way the painting's composed,

0:37:370:37:39

it actually places us in the position of the voyeur.

0:37:390:37:43

What is it?

0:37:430:37:45

A fantastically accomplished piece of high Victorian soft porn.

0:37:450:37:51

Victoria herself described it

0:37:510:37:53

as a beautiful painting of beautiful women.

0:37:530:37:57

And if ever a work from her collection gave the lie

0:37:570:38:00

to the idea that Victoria was Victorian prudish, well, this is it.

0:38:000:38:05

I think this painting was her way of saying to the rather buttoned-up

0:38:050:38:10

Albert that no matter how much work we do here,

0:38:100:38:14

I want you, my beloved,

0:38:140:38:17

to stay in touch with your sexy side.

0:38:170:38:20

Queen Victoria also valued art that fixed a particular moment.

0:38:210:38:26

You can see this at Osborne in a genre of sculpture unique to her.

0:38:290:38:33

Queen Victoria is probably the most famously morbid monarch

0:38:340:38:40

in British history, and it's often thought that she was plunged into

0:38:400:38:44

that morbidity by the death of Albert.

0:38:440:38:47

But these very poignant images show, I think, very clearly,

0:38:470:38:50

that she thought a lot about death long before his passing.

0:38:500:38:54

What are they?

0:38:540:38:56

They're little, marble facsimiles

0:38:560:39:00

of the feet, the hands, and the arms

0:39:000:39:04

of Victoria and Albert's infant children.

0:39:040:39:08

This is the foot of Princess Victoria.

0:39:080:39:13

This is the arm of Princess Louise.

0:39:130:39:18

The arm of Prince Leopold.

0:39:180:39:21

Despite their funereal quality, these are relics of living children,

0:39:220:39:27

sculpted from plaster casts taken while they were fast asleep.

0:39:270:39:31

I think what they tell us, what they speak to Victoria of,

0:39:320:39:36

is the fact that, yes, her children have grown up

0:39:360:39:40

but the children they once were have died.

0:39:400:39:43

They will never come back.

0:39:430:39:45

They can never be, as it were, known again except in this form.

0:39:450:39:50

What a wonderful way it is to remember the child

0:39:500:39:53

that your adult child has grown out of being.

0:39:530:39:57

I think these works of art, and they are works of art, conceived,

0:39:570:40:01

designed, created, in effect, even if she didn't technically make them,

0:40:010:40:05

by Queen Victoria, they were her way of expressing

0:40:050:40:10

the depth of her love for her children

0:40:100:40:13

and her attachment

0:40:130:40:15

to the very idea of childhood as somehow

0:40:150:40:18

a blessed state.

0:40:180:40:20

Albert, a student of art history,

0:40:240:40:27

designed Osborne as a Renaissance Italian palazzo.

0:40:270:40:30

An enormous fresco by William Dyce looms over the main staircase,

0:40:310:40:35

a relic of the Prince's attempt to revive fresco painting

0:40:350:40:39

and introduce it to Britain.

0:40:390:40:41

His dressing room was filled

0:40:430:40:44

with dozens of early Italian masterpieces,

0:40:440:40:46

including this triptych by Duccio, the father of Sienese painting.

0:40:460:40:51

In the 1840s, this was collecting at its most avant-garde.

0:40:530:40:58

Albert was certainly didactic.

0:41:050:41:07

The royal children were expected to grow their own vegetables,

0:41:070:41:11

learn soldiery in a mock-fort and also, of course, to collect.

0:41:110:41:16

What have we here? Well...

0:41:190:41:21

..this is one of my favourite things in all of Osborne House.

0:41:220:41:25

It's Prince Albert's little museum.

0:41:250:41:28

I say museum but what it really is, I think, is a Wunderkammer,

0:41:280:41:32

a room of wonders,

0:41:320:41:34

a cabinet of curiosities because it contains examples

0:41:340:41:38

of more or less everything under the Sun.

0:41:380:41:40

So, for example, in this cabinet, we've got the Far East.

0:41:400:41:44

Trophies of Empire.

0:41:440:41:46

We've got a peacock feather confiscated from the governor

0:41:460:41:50

of one of the Chinese states during one of the Opium Wars.

0:41:500:41:54

And, above, this wonderfully totemic,

0:41:540:41:56

tribal image of Queen Victoria.

0:41:560:41:59

There are, of course, remnants of the culture of the ancient world,

0:42:000:42:05

and, down here, I notice...

0:42:050:42:07

..part of the ceiling of the Necropolis in Athens.

0:42:090:42:13

Sh! Don't tell the Greeks, they might want it back.

0:42:140:42:17

As well as archaeology, there's natural history,

0:42:180:42:21

geology and world culture.

0:42:210:42:23

The traditional dress of two orphans from the Crimean War

0:42:230:42:27

who came to Osborne after being rescued by the Royal Navy.

0:42:270:42:31

There's a dazzling breadth of interest here

0:42:310:42:33

and a sense that anything might be worth collecting.

0:42:330:42:36

I love this.

0:42:380:42:39

Made in South America,

0:42:390:42:42

it's a feathered hat presented to Queen Victoria.

0:42:420:42:45

Now, I like to think that that was her gardening hat.

0:42:450:42:48

I can't prove it and there are no photographs

0:42:480:42:50

but I'm sure she would have worn it.

0:42:500:42:53

And, at the end of the room, you've got this fantastic, spooky

0:42:530:42:56

apparition of an entire stuffed crocodile.

0:42:560:42:59

But what's wonderful about this little family museum

0:42:590:43:03

is the sense that you have, as you read the labels,

0:43:030:43:06

every one of his children added something to it.

0:43:060:43:10

This was added by Beatrice, this was added by Louise,

0:43:100:43:13

this was added by Edward, the future Edward VII.

0:43:130:43:17

What you realise in here is that Albert didn't just give his children

0:43:170:43:20

a love of art, and curiosity, and so on,

0:43:200:43:24

he actually gave them nothing less than a kind of mania

0:43:240:43:28

for collecting and curating.

0:43:280:43:31

Albert's careful curatorial mind was handy

0:43:360:43:39

given the strict budget that he and Victoria set themselves.

0:43:390:43:43

For paintings, Victoria allowed herself £2,000 a year.

0:43:450:43:49

To spread royal patronage around, she and Albert often purchased

0:43:490:43:54

a single, representative painting by an artist.

0:43:540:43:57

John Martin's hymn to the British landscape

0:43:590:44:01

as it was about to disappear under railway lines.

0:44:010:44:04

William Powell Frith's portrait of Victorian society

0:44:070:44:10

on manoeuvres, thanks to those same railways.

0:44:100:44:13

Albert spent a great deal of energy reordering and cataloguing

0:44:170:44:20

the Royal Collection.

0:44:200:44:22

And, at Windsor Castle, he created this beautifully decorated space

0:44:220:44:26

as his own inner sanctum.

0:44:260:44:29

So, the Print Room at Windsor Castle...

0:44:290:44:32

..Albert's brainchild, and there he is, in profile,

0:44:340:44:39

and this beautiful ceiling as well.

0:44:390:44:40

Tell me a little bit about the room.

0:44:400:44:42

Well, the room was configured by Albert in the 1850s,

0:44:420:44:45

completed just before his death.

0:44:450:44:46

And it was essentially to his design

0:44:460:44:49

in the manner of a Renaissance studiolo

0:44:490:44:51

with beautiful plaster, painted ceiling,

0:44:510:44:53

carved cabinets all the way around.

0:44:530:44:55

And this was to house the prints and drawings collection.

0:44:550:44:58

And do you feel this is THE space, among all others,

0:44:580:45:02

that takes us to the heart of Albert?

0:45:020:45:05

Yes. The Raphael collection was the heart of his activity.

0:45:050:45:08

And this is the Raphael cabinet and, as you can see,

0:45:080:45:11

it contains 50 portfolios of prints and photographs

0:45:110:45:17

after the works of Raphael.

0:45:170:45:19

So, this is a kind of database?

0:45:190:45:22

Yes. And, to this day, it's unsurpassed.

0:45:220:45:24

This is the most comprehensive assemblage

0:45:240:45:27

of the works of Raphael in existence.

0:45:270:45:30

-Wow.

-If I can just lift this rather heavy portfolio up onto the table.

0:45:300:45:34

So, he was a weightlifter as well as an art historian.

0:45:340:45:36

Well, they had porters in those days.

0:45:360:45:39

And the portfolio that we have here is of the Stanza della Segnatura,

0:45:390:45:44

the ceiling only.

0:45:440:45:46

The coverage was so great he could have an entire portfolio

0:45:460:45:48

devoted to the ceiling of one room.

0:45:480:45:50

So, in the Vatican, can't collect it, can't own it,

0:45:500:45:53

but you can own it, as it were, in photographic form

0:45:530:45:56

-or in reproduction form.

-Exactly.

0:45:560:45:58

And photographs are where the Raphael collection is revolutionary

0:45:580:46:02

because it's right at the dawn of photography.

0:46:020:46:04

So, he actually got somebody to go into the Vatican

0:46:040:46:09

and to go into the Stanza della Segnatura, in the Pope's Apartments,

0:46:090:46:13

-and to take photographs?

-Yes.

-Of these pictures.

0:46:130:46:16

What sort of cameras were they using?

0:46:160:46:18

Well, that's the size of the negative. That's a contact print.

0:46:180:46:21

That's the size of the negative? Man!

0:46:210:46:23

I'm just awestruck by the Victorians.

0:46:230:46:26

But, of course, what it lacked was colour

0:46:260:46:28

and that was provided through these chromolithographs.

0:46:280:46:31

So, now we've got, in effect, a handmade colour photograph.

0:46:310:46:35

And what's the point of it all?

0:46:350:46:36

Who's this for?

0:46:360:46:38

What's Albert trying to achieve?

0:46:380:46:40

It's not just for his own pleasure because he's not like that.

0:46:400:46:43

This was never intended to be the finished product.

0:46:430:46:45

This was a tool for students to use for generations afterwards.

0:46:450:46:48

And Albert hoped that people would come to Windsor and would use

0:46:480:46:52

the Raphael collection,

0:46:520:46:54

and this would be a springboard for the systematic,

0:46:540:46:57

for the scientific study of Raphael's works.

0:46:570:47:00

Which is exactly how I was taught art history,

0:47:000:47:03

-in a photographic library.

-Yes.

0:47:030:47:04

So, this is everything you need to try to understand

0:47:040:47:08

-how she came into being?

-Yes.

0:47:080:47:10

When one thinks of royal families, kings and queens,

0:47:100:47:14

you often think of them instinctively as people

0:47:140:47:16

who wanted to keep their treasures for themselves, and only their

0:47:160:47:19

courtiers and themselves would ever see these things.

0:47:190:47:21

But Albert and Victoria seem to me, they're completely the opposite.

0:47:210:47:25

They move in the opposite direction.

0:47:250:47:27

They want to take knowledge and art and science,

0:47:270:47:30

they want to take it and give it to the public.

0:47:300:47:32

This interest in the processes of mass reproduction

0:47:340:47:37

is typical of Albert.

0:47:370:47:39

He didn't just want to disseminate knowledge,

0:47:390:47:42

he believed that modern industry could finally put great works of art

0:47:420:47:46

into the hands of the masses.

0:47:460:47:48

In 1843, Prince Albert arrived with much fanfare here in Birmingham.

0:47:520:47:56

He wanted to witness at first hand some of the new,

0:47:560:48:01

cutting-edge manufacturing technology.

0:48:010:48:04

There was great local interest.

0:48:040:48:05

The Birmingham Gazette reported that the Prince was especially interested

0:48:050:48:10

in the operation of batteries in connection

0:48:100:48:14

with various metals in solution.

0:48:140:48:17

He saw a real rose turned into a golden rose

0:48:170:48:22

and he was so fascinated by the process

0:48:220:48:25

that he became positively obsessed by it.

0:48:250:48:28

Albert witnessed a process called electroforming,

0:48:360:48:39

which is being recreated for me by artist Jo Horton.

0:48:390:48:43

A dried rose has been coated in an electrically conductive material

0:48:440:48:48

and attached to a battery.

0:48:480:48:50

A solution containing a precious metal is being prepared.

0:48:500:48:54

Gold in Albert's demonstration, copper in mine.

0:48:540:48:58

So, Igor, the creature lives.

0:48:580:49:02

SHE LAUGHS

0:49:020:49:03

I feel as if I'm transported back into some strange world

0:49:030:49:07

-of 19th-century science.

-Yeah, absolutely.

0:49:070:49:10

I'm sort of really inspired, as an artist, by Mary Shelley

0:49:100:49:14

and all that sort of era.

0:49:140:49:16

It's sort of what's drawn me to the whole process itself.

0:49:160:49:20

-Great. Well, I'm.... Dip away.

-Absolutely.

0:49:200:49:22

So, we're going in...

0:49:220:49:25

And this will be kept in position to get a first coating.

0:49:270:49:31

The conductive material on the rose attracts copper from the solution,

0:49:330:49:37

gradually encasing the flower and stem.

0:49:370:49:40

So, what's actually happening?

0:49:420:49:44

Well, the copper deposition is thickening

0:49:440:49:48

and it's also travelling down and growing around the rosebud.

0:49:480:49:53

So in about 40 minutes, it should be fully bright.

0:49:530:49:56

We shouldn't have to do any sort of finishing.

0:49:560:49:58

It's a really sort of economical, exciting sort of process.

0:49:580:50:03

I think they actually called the technicians the alchemists.

0:50:030:50:07

-Is that right?

-Yes, I think they were described as that.

0:50:070:50:09

-Great, well, let's have a look.

-OK.

-I'll let you take it out.

0:50:120:50:15

SOLUTION BUBBLES

0:50:170:50:19

There we go.

0:50:210:50:22

-So...

-It's a delicate little thing to be turning.

0:50:220:50:25

-Oh, wow.

-It is.

-That's really good, isn't it? Fantastic.

0:50:250:50:29

It really is. It's just so magical.

0:50:290:50:31

For Albert, electroforming wasn't about gilding flowers.

0:50:330:50:37

Anything could be copied.

0:50:370:50:39

It was a way to reproduce the artworks of classical

0:50:390:50:42

and Renaissance civilisation.

0:50:420:50:44

Reproductions of archaeological finds from Pompeii and Herculaneum

0:50:450:50:49

were copied and made, collected by bourgeois consumers

0:50:490:50:53

as well as Victoria and Albert themselves.

0:50:530:50:56

And Albert commissioned an exquisite jewel cabinet for Victoria,

0:50:580:51:02

replete with electroformed figures to show the new

0:51:020:51:05

could sit alongside the antique.

0:51:050:51:08

It was placed prominently in the Great Exhibition of 1851.

0:51:110:51:14

Albert was the prime mover in this first, great international showcase.

0:51:170:51:21

An optimistic attempt to understand the new machine age preserved for

0:51:230:51:27

Victoria and Albert in a souvenir album filled with watercolours

0:51:270:51:31

by Joseph Nash and Louis Haghe.

0:51:310:51:33

But, for me, Albert's most enduring legacy was created after

0:51:370:51:41

the Great Exhibition, and you can see this on the streets

0:51:410:51:45

of South Kensington in London.

0:51:450:51:47

For my money, for anyone's money,

0:51:530:51:56

this is one of the most telling monuments of Victorian Britain.

0:51:560:52:00

At the top, Albert.

0:52:000:52:02

On the side, the financial accounts, the score.

0:52:030:52:09

The Great Exhibition cost £336,000.

0:52:090:52:13

The revenues, £522,000.

0:52:150:52:19

Translate that into modern money,

0:52:200:52:23

50 million spent, 80 million back.

0:52:230:52:28

And what did Albert do with the profit?

0:52:280:52:30

The profit from his great scheme...

0:52:300:52:32

..he bought this!

0:52:330:52:35

He bought this. He bought South Ken!

0:52:350:52:38

And he stipulated that here should be placed great museums of art,

0:52:380:52:42

science, industry.

0:52:420:52:44

And it came to pass.

0:52:440:52:46

No wonder that, even in his own lifetime, this whole area

0:52:460:52:49

became known as Albertopolis.

0:52:490:52:51

What a man, what a visionary!

0:52:510:52:54

South Kensington is the embodiment of Albert's enlightened,

0:52:560:52:59

Germanic belief that culture and learning

0:52:590:53:02

should be at the very heart of a nation.

0:53:020:53:04

One of the earliest institutions to open here

0:53:060:53:09

was the South Kensington Museum in 1857.

0:53:090:53:12

Most people know it today as the V&A.

0:53:120:53:15

Museums change lives and this museum certainly changed mine.

0:53:160:53:21

It was the first place my mum brought me to when I was little boy

0:53:210:53:24

to look at and to enjoy art, and I doubt very much whether I'd be doing

0:53:240:53:27

what I do now if it weren't for the V&A.

0:53:270:53:30

And I'm sure my story has been repeated thousands of times.

0:53:300:53:35

How many photographers have come here to deepen their understanding

0:53:350:53:39

of their craft? How many designers have come here to beg,

0:53:390:53:42

borrow or steal an idea?

0:53:420:53:43

How many artists have come here to seek inspiration?

0:53:430:53:46

I think Albert was the very first member of the royal family

0:53:460:53:50

profoundly to realise that by taking art out to the people

0:53:500:53:55

of Great Britain, art could be used to improve the life of the nation.

0:53:550:54:00

And we call it the Victorian Age,

0:54:000:54:03

but surely it should also be remembered as the age of Albert.

0:54:030:54:07

We all know how this ended.

0:54:100:54:12

The energetic Albert died on December 14 1861...

0:54:140:54:18

..aged only 42.

0:54:190:54:21

The impact on Victoria was profound.

0:54:220:54:25

For three months after Albert's death

0:54:340:54:37

Victoria couldn't bear to come in here to his sanctum, the Print Room.

0:54:370:54:43

And, then, on the 20th of March 1862

0:54:430:54:47

she writes this very stoical entry in her diary.

0:54:470:54:52

She says she's brought herself to go to the Print Room,

0:54:520:54:57

"the favourite resort of my dearest Albert."

0:54:570:55:00

And then she simply adds,

0:55:020:55:04

"I was much upset and could say nothing."

0:55:040:55:09

They still keep, in this room...

0:55:110:55:14

..these four albums of drawings and watercolours,

0:55:160:55:21

all of them made by Victoria in the five or six years

0:55:210:55:26

immediately after Albert's death.

0:55:260:55:29

Each year is prefaced with one of these little inscriptions.

0:55:310:55:37

A black cross,

0:55:370:55:39

"The fourth year of my great sorrow."

0:55:390:55:43

What of the images themselves? Well...

0:55:440:55:46

..it's a sad contrast with the earlier albums, where so often,

0:55:480:55:52

you can sense the couple's pleasure in pasting Victoria's image

0:55:520:55:55

this side, Albert's image that side.

0:55:550:55:57

There's none of this here because,

0:55:570:56:00

of course, all the images are by Victoria.

0:56:000:56:03

I wouldn't psychoanalyse the watercolours to the extent

0:56:040:56:08

of seeing them as artistic expressions of some deep, deep, deep

0:56:080:56:13

depression, although perhaps there is an element of that.

0:56:130:56:16

I think they're also actually very helpful to Victoria.

0:56:160:56:19

I think her love of art that she'd cultivated with Albert gave her

0:56:190:56:23

an ability to get outside of herself, literally,

0:56:230:56:26

to see something outside herself and transmit it to paper.

0:56:260:56:30

And I think that probably had

0:56:300:56:31

a considerable therapeutic function for her.

0:56:310:56:34

But, occasionally, you can sense that some of the images

0:56:340:56:38

descend to a darker place.

0:56:380:56:40

This one in particular.

0:56:410:56:43

A small but singularly eerie and rather bleak watercolour

0:56:440:56:49

which she's written,

0:56:490:56:51

"View from my window at Balmoral...

0:56:510:56:55

"..by moonlight."

0:56:570:56:59

So, you can sense a bit of insomnia, a bit of unrest,

0:57:010:57:05

a bit of disturbance.

0:57:050:57:06

And on the very next page there is an image of Albert's mausoleum

0:57:060:57:09

so we know the way in which her thoughts were turning.

0:57:090:57:13

But away from Victoria's private grief

0:57:160:57:18

something else had been snuffed out.

0:57:180:57:21

She would continue to collect but never with the flair and ambition

0:57:210:57:24

she had displayed during her marriage.

0:57:240:57:26

As a result, I think Albert's death marked the last moment

0:57:270:57:31

when the Court influenced the wider culture of the nation

0:57:310:57:34

as it had in the days of Charles I and George III.

0:57:340:57:37

Take the period from the French Revolution to 1861, when Albert died.

0:57:390:57:43

It really was a golden age of royal patronage and collecting.

0:57:430:57:48

Think of George IV's immense appetite for art, architecture,

0:57:480:57:52

the decorative arts, tableware, you name it.

0:57:520:57:55

Think of Albert's astonishing energy, his spreading the word.

0:57:550:57:59

His proselytising, his working with Victoria.

0:57:590:58:03

But the truth is that, after Albert's death,

0:58:030:58:05

things would never quite be the same again.

0:58:050:58:08

This golden moment had passed.

0:58:080:58:11

In the final episode, the Royal Collection enters modern times.

0:58:140:58:18

As the monarchy adapts to the end of Empire and a world at war,

0:58:180:58:21

I explore how the character of its collecting changed...

0:58:210:58:25

..entering a smaller, more intimate realm.

0:58:260:58:28

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