The Family of Queen Victoria in 1887

Laurits Tuxen's Family of Queen Victoria in 1887 is one of the most ambitious royal group portraits of the Victorian era — a massive canvas recording the assembled family at the golden jubilee, when European royalty descended on London in numbers unprecedented before or since. Tuxen, the Danish court painter who had established his reputation with exactly this type of royal group portrait at the Danish and Russian courts, spent years on the commission, making individual sittings across multiple visits to Windsor. The painting documents Victoria surrounded by children, grandchildren, and in-laws who included the Emperor of Germany, the kings of Denmark, Greece, and Belgium, and a constellation of lesser royal houses — the 'grandmother of Europe' at the apex of her dynastic achievement. The work is held in the King's Gallery and functions simultaneously as portraiture, dynastic document, and visual testament to the extraordinary network of royal marriages through which Victoria had bound the major European dynasties in a web of family connection that would be torn apart by the First World War. Tuxen's ability to organize more than fifty figures into a coherent, legible composition while maintaining individual likenesses made him the natural choice for this unique commission.

Tuxen manages the extraordinary compositional challenge of a large group portrait — dozens of figures in court dress, arranged to convey both familial intimacy and dynastic grandeur — with considerable skill. Each face is rendered with individual attention, even for minor figures. The palette is rich with the gold, red, and blue of court uniforms and decorations, managed to avoid visual chaos while creating appropriate splendor. Light falls to unite the group while distinguishing the central figure of Victoria from her family.