Gallery 09 - Balmoral Phenomenon

Balmoral Phenomenon

Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were so enchanted by Scotland that they decided to find a holiday home in Aberdeenshire.

Surrounded by loch, mountains and moors, Balmoral Castle say on the banks of the River Dee and offered private refuge far from the public eye. This is where the Royal couple could indulge their passion for Highland life from tartan and bagpipes to picnics and porridge.

Their love of the area was deeply embedded in the Victorian longing to recreate a Highland romance is Scotland as portrayed in Sir Walter Scott’s novels. Balmoral played a key part in establishing a social phenomenon that shaped our view of Scottish culture and identity, both real and invented.

This display explores the Royal love affair with Balmoral and the Scottish Highlands. Victorian notions of Scottish identity have since been challenged through the work of contemporary artists.

Land of Mountain and Flood

Mountains and flood are ancient, elemental, raw nature beyond human control. They seem to possess a power and nobility that might stand as emblems of the Scottish character and people, defiant in their independent spirit.

The wild landscape of Scotland and the concept of national identity became intertwined in the poem Lay of the Last Minstrel by Sir Walter Scott, in which he invoked his country as ‘Land of the mountain and the flood’.

Dramatic cliffs, torrents, highland cattle, stags, mountains and lochs appealed to the romantic consciousness of Victorian tourists. They wanted to experience first-hand a picturesque image of the Highlands, popularised by Scott’s novels and poems.

‘O Caledonia! stern and wild, / Meet nurse for a poetic child! / Land of brown heath and shaggy wood, / Land of the mountain and the flood.’ Walter Scott’s poem, Land of the Last Minstrel

Artists responded to this romantic vision of Scotland, portraying scenes of untamed magnificence and landscapes steeped in Scottish history, poetry and folklore.

Telling Tales

Stories are immensely powerful to use; they resonate in our minds and affect us emotionally. For Victorian audiences the interpretation of a painting was based on an expectation that a visual image could be translated into a narrative.

The fascination with narrative painting was underpinned by a revived interest in the history of the Scottish Highlands, which informed the writings of Robert Burns and Sir Walter Scott.

Queen Victoria grew up reading Scott’s novels and his romantic ideals of a mythical Scotland shaped her views of the country. In Scott’s descriptive passages her husband, Prince Albert, found strong echoes of the landscape around his childhood home in Germany. Heroic deeds, sublime landscapes and above all, the use of sparsely populated rural settings and local dialect: these magical ingredients of romance all greatly appealed to the Royal couple.

Their romantic vision, based on Scott, inspired works of art that depict stories from Scottish myth and legend, history and literature.

Display Case

Queen Victoria popularised traditional Scottish craftwork and decorative art, and she herself often turned to local craftspeople to create gifts to thanks people for their service and friendship. The bracelet, crafted in Aberdeen, features intricate Celtic ropework details which complements the polished granite stones.

The silver pipe, 18ct gold pocket watch, and skean dhu were all given to her servant John Brown as gifts.

The skean dhu is a small knife worn as part of traditional Highland dress, which became fashionable again during Victoria’s reign. Intricately decorated skean dhu sheaths such as this one were highly prized works of art rather than purely functional objects. Victoria also placed an inscription amongst the silver thistle bands on the leather sheath: ‘V.R. to J.B. March 21^st 1871’.

Drawers

Victoria and Albert valued the honesty and directness of their Highland servants, including John Brown and John Grant. After Albert’s death, Victoria’s family observed that John Brown seemed to help her through her grief and encouraged her to make him a permanent attendant. Later their relationship became a source of gossip.

The second image was taken by local photographer George Wilson in October 1863 to commemorate the second anniversary of Victoria’s last ‘Great Expedition’ into the Highlands with Albert. Victoria is seated on her pony Fyvie, with John Brown at the pony’s head and John Grant by the tail. The photograph was later cropped to exclude Grant and issued to the public. The copies were sold in large numbers and the composition was repeated by several photographers, but the original sentiment of the Wilson photograph was lost.

Victoria and Albert took a personal interpretation in the lives of their Highland servants and tenants. They built granite homes on the Balmoral Estate along with other improvements and developed close relationships with Deeside residents.

The central photograph of John Brown, a devoted servant, was inscribed by Victoria: ‘J.B. My Dearest Best Friend VR’. Victoria also became close to other members of the Brown family, some of whom also worked for the Royal Family at Balmoral.

In the first letter, Victoria writes from Osbourne House on the Isle of Wight to Hugh Brown to express sympathy and sorrow on the death of his mother. In the second letter, she writes to Hugh again remembering his brother John who died earlier that year.

Victoria spent more time at Balmoral following Albert’s death. Although she famously wore mourning clothes for the rest of her life, Victoria did not live in seclusion. Various members of her large family would come from across Europe to visit. Victoria would sometimes mark these occasions with photographs, such as the one featuring her granddaughter Princess Victoria, daughter of Princess Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse. Victoria also hosted society events at Balmoral, such as a dinner for Clansmen in September 1890.

Victoria instilled a lasting fondness for Scotland in the Royal Family which continued after her death in 1901. Today’s Royal Family often attends the Braemar Gathering, one of the biggest of the traditional Highland Games. The photograph from the 1921 Gathering shows the Prince of Wales (King Edward VIII), the Duke of York (King George VI), and Prince Henry all wearing their traditional Highland dress.