Portrait of Prince Albert in Field-Marshall Uniform

This debonair image of Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg & Gotha, the husband of Queen Victoria, is thought to have been painted shortly after their marriage and his arrival in England in 1840. In that year, Albert was awarded the highest British military rank of Field-Marshall, and the most senior order of knighthood, the Order of the Garter, and he is depicted here in appropriate dress uniform and bearing the Garter Star.

The watercolour portrait closely matches Victoria's own description of her husband-to-be, written the previous year, 'Excessively handsome, such beautiful blue eyes, en exquisite nose, and such a pretty mouth, with delicate moustache, and light but very slight whiskers; a beautiful figure, broad in the shoulders and a fine waist. My heart is quite going'. The couple had a happy marriage, producing nine children, until Prince Albert’s untimely death.

Chalon was a Swiss-born artist who moved to England as a child, elected as a Royal Academician in 1816. He painted both Prince Albert and Queen Victoria several times in 1840 and he was later given the title Portrait Painter in Water Colour to Her Majesty in 1847.