As symbols of empire, their jobs are to exist, and look good doing it. So they have the time to contemplate, perching their hands beautifully, brushing their cheeks tenderly.
What is the point of such an image?
Soft power? Sure. Propaganda? Maybe. Just a print to be made, an image composed of other images that were floating around at the time? Probably. It would have sold well, and maybe it was also distributed, to be dispersed around the colonised world, to remind everyone who the Queen is, and how the empire is held (ceremonial uniforms and ships that rule the seas?).
Yes, to read the image is impossible without reading the Empire, without reading colonialism, without reading oppression and destruction. But I also want to know what ship it is (The Empress of India?), whether there is a photographic reference of the soldier somewhere (there probably is/was). Does it add anything? Maybe. Does it aid in its reading?Possibly.
What do we see?
When we look at something, emotion is often not what we gravitate to. But look look look, at the delicate bend of her wrist (originally adorned in a pearl bracelet encircling her dead husband Albert’s portrait, although it also reminds me of this beauty), resting against her chin as she contemplates. This print was imagined after 1897, given that Victoria’s portrait is a reference to her Diamond Jubilee photograph.
An image that feels like a love letter. Look at the young soldier at its heart, whose own hand (his right), bends and then bends again, his fingers brushing his chin in a tender mirroring of his queen. A soldier of the British Empire. He is in uniform, but it’s after the Crimean War in 1856, and so the bearskin hat means that his uniform is ceremonial. As is hers. Two symbols. Even though his backpack implies he is ready to go, flanked by two ships (warships?). It would be easy to write fan fiction of these two, separated by class and geography, united by longing and melancholy.
One should not be frivolous about history. Or art. Especially not art. But you know, straight-faced readings are like looking at a flat sheet. Of course, history is full of people, who love, and long, and are separated. And art is made by and of people – Queen Empress, Mrs Brown and Loving Mother to the Munshi
(I liked Mrs Brown more, probably because of the Scottish accent).
Queen Victoria's Guard
Early 20th Century
Artist Unknown