Edward VII When a Boy
Not on view
Winterhalter was the favourite portraitist amongst European royalty during the mid-nineteenth century. He first visited Great Britain in 1842 to execute portraits of the British royal family and in time produced over a hundred such works. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert admired him enormously and he produced several group portraits of their nine children. Here he depicts the eldest son Edward, Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) as a small child charmingly dressed as a sailor from 1846, now in the Royal Collection. The publisher himself presented an example of the print to the child's parents at Windsor Castle on January 1, 1848 ahead of the public release the following month.