Passionate Patrons: Victoria & Albert and the Arts

Throughout the twenty-four years of their marriage, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were enthusiastic supporters of British art, commissioning a large number of works and purchasing countless others across a wide range of styles and media. Passionate Patrons offers a concise introduction to the scope of Victoria and Albert’s connoisseurship, tracing their evolving tastes through the entire history of Victorian art.

The volume matches an explanatory text with more than one hundred full-color illustrations that reveal the remarkable scope of Victoria and Albert’s collecting, including formal portraits, specially commissioned jewelry, costumes created for fancy dress balls, books, sheet music, and more. Sculptures the pair purchased for each other as birthday gifts—as well as original sketches and drawings they made—offer a more intimate view of the central role that art played in their loving marriage. Victoria and Albert will please any reader who loves the Victorian era—and the royal couple who were at its heart.