Where are the Chalon Paintings?

In the modern history of the Chalon portraits, Chalon made an initial, contemporaneous sketch of the queen in 1837 then, in Lowe's account, subsequently developed it into three separate but essentially alike paintings, one for her mother (henceforth called the British Chalon portrait) and another two portraits for European royalty.

Where might one view the portraits now?

First [TPSoNZ64v4, p2] reports that the Chalon portrait given to Victoria’s mother was given in turn to the Prince Consort. [Lowe55, p343] provides further detail with “At the time of the International Exhibition in 1851, the Prince Consort commissioned John Buckley to paint another copy (henceforth called the Buckley copy), as it was decided to exhibit the original, and the Prince was anxious that a copy should be in his possession in case any accident should happen to the original.”

So now, following Lowe's account, we have three Chalon portraits plus a fourth official copy, the Buckley copy.

[Lowe55, p343] continues that “At the time of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1897, both the original and the Buckley copy were on view. Since that time all record of the whereabouts of the former has been lost”

For the missing British Chalon portrait, [Tombs51, p145] highlights the mystery: “Is it hidden, forgotten in some dusty vault in Windsor Castle or Buckingham Palace, or did it vanish into some Victorian ‘black market,’ perhaps proudly to grace a Transatlantic mansion? Possibly it will come to light in the future …”

Returning to [Lowe55, p343]: “although the Buckley copy was later purchased by Sir John Hanbury Williams, upon whose death it passed into the possession of the late King [King George VI], and now hangs at Windsor Castle.” [TPSoNZ64v4, p2] reports a condensed version of this.

Regretfully this copy is neither published nor even listed on the Royal Collection Trust’s website. [TODO: ask why.]

Still, it seems that we are down to the two Chalon portraits and the Buckley copy.

[Lowe55, p343] continues “The two other copies painted by Chalon were given by Queen Victoria to the King of Prussia [then Frederick William III] and to the King of Portugal [then Ferdinand II, the nephew of King Leopold I]”. Henceforth we shall call these the Prussian and Portuguese Chalon portraits respectively. Again [TPSoNZ64v4, p2] concurs.

[Lowe55, p343] adds “It is believed that the first of these copies was destroyed by the R.A.F. during the last war [WWII], but the King of Portugal’s copy came to this country [UK] when his successor, King Manuel, abdicated in 1910. In 1947 this copy was sold and I [Robson Lowe] was fortunate enough to acquire it …”

Now we are down to just one Chalon original (the Portuguese Chalon portrait), and the Buckley copy. It’s dangerous being a royal portrait!

[Smith91, p5] reinforces and updates this understanding, using language that specifically excludes the Buckley copy, via “Chalon himself is reputed to have painted three copies of this portrait to be given to the heads of European royal families, but the whereabouts of only one is known today: it is now in America, having until recently been in the possession of Mr Robson Lowe.”

Apparently Lowe continued to hold his understanding – that just one Chalon portrait remained – even in his 1994 article [Lowe94, p153].

But hold on!

[Dickson2000, p5] reports that there are actually two extant copies: “Chalon’s 1837 portrait was painted apparently in three copies, one of which was presented to King Leopold of the Belgians and now hangs in Royal Palace in Brussels (frontispiece)” And indeed this can be viewed online. Assuming one did not spend time in the Belgian Royal Palace, then an earlier clue to the portrait’s location comes in 1995 from a laconic sentence under the entry for Chalon: “The portrait in now in the Belgian Royal Collection.” [Millar95, p183]. There is more detail at p142 under the entry for Buckley, “Copy of the watercolour portrait by Chalon of 1838, which the Queen commissioned as a present for her mother, and which the Duchess of Kent afterwards gave to Prince Albert [died 1861]. It was later given to Leopold I, King of the Belgians [died 1865], and is now in the Belgian Royal Collection.” But there is an even earlier clue, in lot 60 in a 1986 auction [Christies86, p32] where it says “Alfred Edward Chalon and studio … The composition relates to a watercolour drawn in 1838, now in the Royal collection of Belgium, which was engraved by Samuel Cousins …” Apparently facts known to the fine art industry did not readily leach into the philatelic community.

If we assume that Prince Albert held onto the painting until his death, then presumably the painting was transferred to King Leopold I sometime between 1861 and 1865. Its appearance at the 1897 Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Exhibition at the Royal Academy would then have been a courtesy loan by King Leopold II, and afterwards the painting quickly disappeared from British shores again.

In a December 2021 email, Mrs M.V., Deputy Inventaries and Heritage, Civil List of H.M. the King, Royal Palace, B-1000 Brussels, Rue Brederode, 16 kindly confirms many these details and does not have further information, as she writes "Queen Victoria’s portrait by Chalon remained property of the Royal Collection since it came into the collection of King Leopold I – who was Queen Victoria’s godfather. It remained in that collection and was inherited by his eldest son, King Leopold II. The collection was [a] private belonging of the King, until his death when it was incorporated into the belongings of the Belgian State but remained in deposit of the Royal Palaces on purpose. That was a way to guarantee an adapted decoration over time to the Belgian royal residences. We do not have information about how it came into the belongings of Leopold I. Nor about exhibitions where the portrait could have been seen during the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. As the portrait by Chalon was used for a stamp, it remained under the attention of the public and was never considered as lost. We had regularly request about it."

However [Millar95] introduces two modest points of confusion with the Buckley copy:

1. “Provenance: Presented to King George VI in 1947 by Miss Hanbury Williams, in memory of her father, Sir John Hanbury Williams”, since this date is a year or two after Lowe published his tale [Lowe45, p143] of the work already hanging at the royal residence: “… a copy of the original made by Buckley about 1858 … which now hangs in the Henry III Tower at Windsor Castle. It is from this copy that the illustration opposite has been made with the kind permission of the Keeper of the Tower, the late Major-General Sir John Hanbury-Williams, G.C.V.O, K.C.B.” This confusion is resolved when we discover that Sir John Hanbury-Williams, as Keeper of the Tower, resided in his own apartment in the Henry III Tower.
2. [Lowe55, p343] indicates that it was John Buckley that painted the Buckley copy, yet [Millar95, p141-142] reports the existence of a Chalon copy signed C.F. Buckley in the Royal Collection and hypothesizes that it is this painting that is the Buckley copy. C.F. Buckley is Charles Frederick Buckley, who lived in London with John Edmund Buckley. Both were artists originally from Cork and are believed to be brothers. Given the collection and the signature (and the sometimes erratic information provided by Lowe) this author follows Millar's hypothesis.

Earlier [Smith91, p5] wrote “one … is … now in America, having until recently been in the possession of Mr Robson Lowe … and the whole picture was reproduced in a New Zealand miniature sheet in 1988 [NzPost2018_1988].” That is, [Smith91] asserts that [NzPost2018_1988] is a copy of the Portuguese Chalon portrait.

This is confused by  [Dickson2000, p6] which reportedly reproduces the Portuguese Chalon portrait, by courtesy of Robson Lowe. However, modern research brings this report into question. Accordingly some of the following analysis and conclusions appear to be based on invalid information and are withdrawn (but left as light gray in the interim).

We use as references the Portuguese and British Chalon portraits, and also the Buckley copy. The first is provided by the exceedingly helpful [Dickson2000, p6] which reproduces the Portuguese Chalon portrait, by courtesy of Robson Lowe. Robson Lowe also had published an image of the Buckley copy, in [Lowe45, p142]. We see a stunning, astonishing, preternatural similarity between the British and Portuguese portraits, then a strong consistency from the British and Portuguese Chalons to the Buckley and Vienna embassy copies (for the latter copy, see below), then a much reduced consistency from these four references to the [NzPost2018_1988] miniature sheet.

The key to the concatenated images is shown below:

British Chalon © KIK-IRPA, Brussels (Belgium), item  X003156

Portuguese Chalon © Robson Lowe and John Dickson

Buckley copy © Lowe

Vienna embassy copy (see below) © Government Art Collection

NZ 1988 miniature sheet

The copyrighted images immediately below are either licensed or their use is believed to be allowed because the purpose is research, the source works are published, the copies were obtained fairly, there is no competitive motive, and a minimal fraction of each work is reproduced.

Comparison of head.
The left two images are astonishingly alike. The other portraits are seen as fair copies. The irises of the eyes in rightmost portrait are noticeably smaller.

Comparison of left ermine border.
The left two images are astonishingly alike including the spacing, orientation, width, length and shape of the inserts of the ermine's black winter tail. The other portraits are seen as fair copies, and indeed the right image regularises the black inserts.

Comparison of central ermine border.
The left two images are astonishingly alike including the spacing, orientation, width, length and shape of the inserts of the ermine's black winter tail. The other portraits are seen as fair copies, and indeed the right image regularises the black inserts.

Comparison of right ermine border.
The left two images are astonishingly alike including the spacing, orientation, width, length and shape of the inserts  of the ermine's black winter tail. The other portraits are seen as fair copies, and indeed the right image regularises the black inserts.

The British and Portuguese Chalon portraits are so astonishingly alike that one wonders if there could have been a mix-up and one portrait's image used for both. For this specific question, it is helpful that the Portuguese portrait seems to have had a harder life in that it suffers from three unique flaws in the background to the upper left (as the viewer sees it) of the Queen. These unique flaws allow this author to dismiss the mix-up hypothesis.

The Portuguese Chalon provided on [Dickson2000, p6] (the second image from the left) has three unique flaws: 1) a pair of white flaws above the leftmost greenery and, 2) above that is a dark oblique flaw. , then 3) to the upper right of that is a "white lightning" crack.

Lest the fidelity of NZ Post’s printers be blamed for the difference between 1988 miniature sheet and the other portraits, the miniature sheet is extraordinarily similar to the high resolution frontispiece of [Odenweller2009] which is captioned “The Chalon portrait”. In this author’s opinion, the miniature sheet and frontispiece may be presumed to have an identical source. In [NzPost2018_1988] and in [Odenweller2009, frontispiece] the eyes are more piercing, the white flowers to the left of Victoria are less detailed, the right (when facing the image) hanging ermine lining is untwisted, the corner of the ermine cape of the Parliament Robe above the nose of the lion is a simple angle (not curved and ruffled), and so forth. Neither [NzPost2018_1988] nor [Odenweller2009, frontispiece] identify the source of their portraits [TODO check around], and it seems most likely that their reference was one of the copies of the Chalon portrait: recall [Lowe55, p343] wrote “Many other copies of the Chalon portrait are in existence, many being painted by various members of the Royal Academy to be hung in the British Embassies and Consulates all over the world.”

Then let us call the painting used for the 1988 New Zealand miniature sheet an embassy copy. It is rather a shame, since this embassy copy, although ravishingly coloured, does not capture Queen Victoria’s head or eyes in the same way as the originals nor is it a step on the journey from portrait to New Zealand stamp. Compared to say the British or Portuguese Chalon portraits, the historical connection is weaker.

Finally, the Government Art Collection also publishes a copy of a Chalon painting, which is held at the British Embassy in Vienna. The website labels the painting as an Alfred Chalon work yet includes a disclaimer “Although this version may have been painted by Chalon himself, confirmation of the artist or copyist of the work and the precise date of its execution have yet to be established.” This work changed hands in 1978 and in 1979, so it cannot be Robson Lowe’s Portuguese Chalon portrait (nor does it look closely like it either). Then this might be the lost Prussian Chalon portrait, but that seems unlikely too given that it does not share an astonishing similarity with the British and Portuguese Chalon portraits. It seems most likely that it is another embassy copy, and then its present location is entirely apt.

There are also other copies.

But we are in for one more surprise. Recall the sketch that Chalon prepared before the portraits? It was discovered by a stamp collector and sold to Mr. Cyril Harmer, chairman of the Bond Street firm of stamp auctioneers. In an undated anecdote in [Lowe94, p152], Lowe writes “I have a photograph of this sketch, the original of which is in the possession of my friend – Mr. Cyril Harmer. A stamp collector came across this sketch, and under the illusion that he would get more for it if he tried to do his business with Cyril Harmer than he would if he approached me direct, toddled along to Bond Street. His sales talk must have been a good one, because Cyril paid much more than I [Lowe] could have afforded to pay for the sketch – so – I had to be satisfied with the photograph.” Cyril’s Harmer’s death was in 1986, so this sketch now has a new home. [TODO: where might it be?]

In summary: we started with the Chalon sketch and (following Lowe's telling) three Chalon portraits, then added the Buckley copy, fell to just one portrait and the Buckley copy, but now have recovered to the sketch, two Chalon portraits and the Buckley copy. However, only the British Chalon is viewable online in colour. As a final thought, perhaps some time in the future such as in 2038 or 2055, NZ Post might produce a further miniature sheet: this time using the British Chalon (and even a further sheet using a Cousins engraving).

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