This portrait of Queen Victoria is possibly the first tapestry woven at the Royal Windsor Tapestry Company. It is taken from a painting by the Austrian artist Baron Heinrich von Angeli (1840-1925) completed at Windsor Castle in 1875.
This is a very suitable subject for the Royal Windsor Tapestry Company which was closely connected with the Royal family. Queen Victoria was Patron and her children were appointed Presidents and Vice Presidents. She made several visits there and recorded her favourable impressions in her diaries. In 1880 she consented to the manufactory being termed 'Royal'. The tapestry cartoon was drawn in 1876 by Phoebus Levin, a German painter working in London between 1855 and 1878. The tapestry bears the names of Michel Brignolas, who became the first Manager, and of Henri C. M. Henry, Art Director of Gillows, the Oxford Street decorators who founded the Royal Windsor Tapestry Company.
The Royal Windsor Tapestry company emulated the work of contemporary French establishments. It adopted the 'basse lisse' (low warp) technique favoured at the fashionable Beauvais factories. The tapestry was exhibited at the Paris International Exhibition of 1878. Here it was purchased by Sir Albert Sasoon for his home at 25 Kensington Gore, London.Tapestry woven in silk and wool of Queen Victoria. The Queen is portrayed full face with her shoulders slightly turned. Her left hand clasps her right, which holds a scroll. She wears a black silk dress trimmed with ermine and lace, the ribbon and Order of the Garter, a pearl necklace, bracelet, brooch and rings, a lace headdress and a small crown. The portrait is bust length, set against a ground in varying shades of brown with, at the upper right, part of the Royal Arms surrounded by the Garter. This is cut by the curved rim of the round frame.Tapestry portrait of Queen Victoria woven in silk and wool, copied by Phoebus Levin, after Heinrich Anton von Angeli, woven in Royal Windsor Tapestry Manufactory, Windsor, 1877British Galleries:
This tapestry was awarded a gold medal at the Paris International Exhibition of 1878 and was possibly the first piece woven at the Royal Windsor Tapestry Manufactory. Queen Victoria wrote favourably of her visits to these workshops in her diaries. Her image in the tapestry is based on a painting by Heinrich von Angeli, the Queen's favourite portrait painter at the time. [27/03/2003]