The Jubilee Ceremony at Westminster Palace

Artist’s Proof: Graphite signature, bottom left ‘W.E. Lockhart’. Label on back ‘Thomas Murray and Son. Established 1821. Canvas Gilder and Print Dealer. 106 Nethergate, Dundee.’

The original painting was shown in Berlin in 1890 and official photogravure copies were produced in Berlin and published by W. Doig and Co., London. A key to the 278 figures was also included.Originally priced £10.100.0. Limited number of artist signed and numbered proofs at £21.0.0. The print in the British Museum is lettered bottom left: ‘After the Painting by W.E. Lockhart RSA’ Bottom right: ‘Published by Wm Doig and Co. 175 New Bond Street, London. November 1st 1890. Top right: ‘Printed in Berlin’. Centre bottom: ‘The Jubilee Celebration in Westminster Abbey June 21st 1887, Commemorative of the Fiftieth Year of the Reign of Queen Victoria, Empress of India. Dedicated by special permission to Her Most Gracious Majesty By Her Most Faithful Subjects And Devoted Servants The Publishers.’

In 1886 Lockhart was awarded a gold medal at the 1886 Edinburgh International Exhibition where it was also his duty to escort Queen Victoria around the exhibition. So impressed was the Queen with her tour and Lockhart’s work that she decided to commission him to paint the following year’s Golden Jubilee Service. This attracted some criticism from Royal Academicians who felt that it should have been one of their own members who should have been awarded the commission, to which the Queen responded; “Yes, indeed, a Royal Academician – but this is Scotland, and this time it will be a Royal Scottish Academician”. Adelaide Gerard, née Lockhart, daughter of W.E. Lockhart. Private Collection, as cited in Margery A. Wilkins, By Royal Command: William Ewart Lockhart R.S.A. R.S.W. Annan, The Friends of Annandale and Eskdale Museums, 1998, p.13.

Notable figures in the audience included, in the box at top right, Sir Frederick Leighton at the far left. The actor Henry Irving gazes out towards the viewer in the centre of the box. To the left of Irving is the poet Robert Browning (whose mother Sarah Anna Wiedemann, the daughter of a ship-owner, was born in Dundee) and to the right of Irving is the actress Ellen Terry. Lockhart also added portraits of himself and his wife. He is the dark bearded figure in the same box at the back on the far right who looks out towards the viewer.

Whistler’s biographers Elizabeth Robins and Joseph Pennell mistakenly suggest that a portrait of Whistler is included in Lockhart’s painting and subsequent print; “Whistler … was invited to the Jubilee ceremonies in Westminster Abbey, and in Mr Lorimer’s [sic] painting he may be seen on one side of the triforium, Leighton on the other. Jubilee in the Abbey, an etching, gives his impressions. He was asked also to the state garden-party at Buckingham Palace, and to the Naval Review off Spithead, when he made the Naval Review series of plates …” The Life of James McNeill Whistler, 5th ed., revised, London and Philadelphia 1911, pp. 262-263. It seems possible that they confused the self-portrait of Lockhart himself with Whistler.

Orchar was involved in a number of events to commemorate Queen Victoria’s reign before and after the Jubilee ceremony. In 1887 he designed the ironwork and paid for a new stone archway to the entrance of Broughty Ferry’s Reres Hill. In the late 1880s he also collaborated, with the town architect William Alexander, to design the Victoria Gallery extension of the Albert Institute.

Provost Ballingal hosted a banquet in Orchar’s honour at the Queen’s Hotel on 14 January 1885 at which the Provost noted in his invite that “His importance as patron of the arts and his generous contributions to the cultural life of Dundee and beyond was well recognised in the honorary banquet of 1885, which acknowledged the ‘grateful recognition of his valuable services to the Cause of Art, and his munificent gifts to the Picture Gallery’. Lamb Collection, 217 (75), Dundee Central Library, Local History Centre.

1. British Museum, Prints and Drawings, London, UK
2. Royal Collection Trust, Windsor Castle, UK

1.  James L. Caw, Scottish Painting Past and Present 1620-1908. Edinburgh. Jack, 1908
2. Raymond Lister, Prints and printmaking: a dictionary and handbook of the art in nineteenth-century Britain. London, Methuen, 1984
3. Peter J. M. McEwan, Dictionary of Scottish Art and Architecture. Woodbridge, Antique Collectors’ Club, 1994
4. Oliver Millar, The Victorian Pictures in the Collection of H.M. The Queen. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992
5. Margery A. Wilkins, By Royal Command: William Ewart Lockhart R.S.A. R.S.W. Annan, The Friends of Annandale and Eskdale Museums, 1998
6. Christopher Wood, Dictionary of Victorian Painters. Woodbridge, Antique Collectors Club, 1971