Watercolours collected by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, a record of their public and private lives together, form the next exhibition at The Queen’s Gallery, Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh. Victoria & Albert: Our Lives in Watercolour reflects the couple’s passionate patronage of watercolour painting. From a collection of thousands of works, 80 will be on display, including several by Scottish artists, some of which will be on display in Scotland for the first time.

The Scottish scenes include a depiction by William Leighton Leitch of the royal yacht sailing into Granton Pier in 1842, Edinburgh with a distant view of the Palace of Holyroodhouse (1862, pictured) by Dunfermline-born Waller Hugh Paton and an Edinburgh scene by Glaswegian artist William Simpson showing Victoria at the unveiling of the memorial to Albert in Edinburgh’s Charlotte Square in 1876. 

Victoria herself was a talented amateur watercolourist, tutored by William Leighton Leitch, one of the most celebrated Scottish landscape painters of the 19th century.