Works of art

The royal couple was particularly keen to keep visual records of their favourite sculptures, paintings and other works of art, including portraits of family members by Franz Xaver Winterhalter (1805-73), Edwin Landseer (1803-61) and Carl Haag (1820-1915). Many of the glass plate negatives depicting such pieces feature details that provide insights into the early ways of documenting works of art by photography. A notable example is the surroundings of paintings which were usually cropped or masked out in the resulting photographs. These settings incorporate exterior walls of buildings or foliage, revealing that the paintings were regularly photographed outdoors where the lighting conditions were favourable.

As well as recording objects from the Royal Collection for domestic purposes, Prince Albert commissioned photography of artworks for educational reasons. Evidence of this can be found in the photographs of paintings, drawings and prints taken across Europe for the Raphael Collection . While the majority of such negatives are yet to come to light, a handful of examples shown below represent the significance of the project’s use of photography as a reproduction tool for wider scholarship.