From “Moving Images: British Royal Portraiture and the Circulation of Ideas” at Villa Terrace through June 2, 2019
The British public’s relationship to their royal family has always confounded me. My angsty teen music led me to believe the queen ran a fascist regime without the promise of a future, but memories of Charles and Diana’s 1981 wedding—which I remember vividly because it was broadcast on a Wednesday morning and prevented me from watching Bozo the Clown—told a much more sympathetic story. I continued to wonder whether the royals were benignly seductive or part of a sinister dynasty that only crack cultural anthropologists like Johnny Rotten could decipher.
“Moving Images: British Royal Portraiture and the Circulation of Ideas” at Villa Terrace (through June 2) tells us that the Windsors are less autonomous moral agents than reflections of their subjects’ values. That reflected image was carefully managed and widely distributed. The exhibition unpacks the story of how royal portraiture was groomed, crafted and supervised over the last two centuries with scores of royal family photos, both formal and informal, official and unofficial. The preponderance of imagery is tightly choreographed “official” portraiture, sometimes on post, or cabinet, cards from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Thus, we see more images of Queen Victoria, Edward IV and Prince Albert Victor than of the Duchess of Cambridge or Prince Harry.
As a reflection of British culture and, by extension, of Western ideals, these images happen to give a reliable picture of evolving modern values. Reacting to what the museum catalogue text calls the “licentious behavior” of George III and IV, Queen Victoria presented herself as the “virgin” queen. An 1887 albumen print of her in a flowing brocade dress, hands in lap and gaze averted, is indeed a picture of modesty. By contrast, masculine posturing is strong in a 1910 silver gelatin print of King Edward IV and Queen Alexandra by W. & B. Downey, and another work from a year later of Edward’s son, George, taken after the untimely death of his father. Both men are frontally photographed, jaw forward in full military regalia, suggesting the ancient landed virtues of duty, honor and service that tradition has required of their station. Their stern comportment comes with a cutting irony, given the hideous wars soon to come.
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The vestiges of martial values endured even as the traditional function of the aristocracy obsolesced. A photograph of King George VI from 1936 in a Royal Guard bearskin hat testifies. Still, it is telling that there are no photographs in the show of George V in the days immediately following the Great War, and the photos between World Wars I and II have a much different emotional tenor. Marcus Adams’ silver gelatin print of Queen Mary holding up the toddler (and eventual queen) Elizabeth in 1927 captures familial tenderness where conviction and tradition would’ve prevailed a few decades earlier.
We see another gap in coverage during and shortly after World War II. This might be expected given the trauma and tumult. Buckingham Palace did strictly control its image before the days of telephoto lenses and digital photography, but where guest curator Lynne Harper’s omissions collide with wartime circumstances are unclear. She does include fascinating video footage of Princess Elizabeth addressing the kingdom calmly and compassionately during The Blitz in 1940. The self-possessed future queen exhibits a parental calmness and guidance that would ultimately become the greater symbolic function of the crown. Other post-war photographs do this in slightly different ways, such as one from the 1960s of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip casually strolling on castle grounds behind a familiar corgi. They’re a little stiff, but casual, modern and otherwise very ordinary; like the rest of us, only without the bad stuff.
The British Commonwealth is technically one of the last constitutional monarchies around, but even that monarchical power is now mostly symbolic. Symbolic power is still power, soft though it may be—especially in the 21st century, where the ability to worm into our consciousness through mass and social media carries more agency than having the title of viscount or the right to hunt fox on public lands.
If you’re unsure of this transfer, have a look at the number of followers @kensingtonroyal, or just ask my mother what Kate Middleton’s been up to recently. She’ll tell you what’s hot in the tabloids and what she and her in-laws have been tweeting about.
