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  • Posts Tagged ‘Queen Victoria’

    QUEEN VICTORIA MOURNING JEWELLERY AT SOTHEBY’S

    Monday, February 15th, 2021

    Mourning jewellery belonging to Queen Victoria will come up at Sotheby’s in London on March 24 as part of the family collection of Patricia Mountbatten, Victoria’s great, great grand daughter. Over the course of her long reign Queen Victoria suffered many losses spending decades mourning not only her husband Albert, but also her mother and three of her children. During this time, she adorned herself in black crepe and wearable mementos of her loved ones.

    On December 14, 1878, the anniversary of Prince Albert’s death, Victoria’s third child Alice died of diphtheria at the age of 35. Princess Alice’s youngest daughter, Princess Marie of Hesse and by Rhine, had also died of the same disease at the age of four. Three of the brooches mark Alice’s tragic passing including: an onyx and seed pearl button commissioned by Queen Victoria in 1879 with a portrait miniature of Princess Alice (£1,000-1,500), an agate and pearl pendant with a lock of hair inscribed ‘from Grandmama VR’ as gift from the Queen to Alice’s daughter, Princess Victoria (£1,000-1,500) and a hardstone, enamel and diamond cross centring on an onyx heart with Alice beneath a coronet (£2,000-3,000).

    The fourth was commissioned by Prince Albert circa 1861 for Queen Victoria to mark the death of her mother. An agate and diamond pendant, it opens to reveal a miniature photograph of the Queen’s mother, Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, later Duchess of Kent, with an inscription by the Prince Consort (£1,000-1,500).

    The Queen’s own mourning jewellery. UPDATE: THESE DOUBLED THEIR ESTIMATES AND BROUGHT IN A COMBINED TOTAL OF £100,800

    JACK DEMPSEY’S TITLE BELT AT CHRISTIE’S

    Friday, August 12th, 2016

    Jack Dempsey’s title belt and a set of keys from the Titanic are among the collectibles on offer at Christie’s Out of the Ordinary sale in South Kensington, London on September 14.  The 250th anniversary edition of this celebration of the unusual and unique comprises over 90 lots.  All are now on view at a five week summer exhibition at Christie’s in the weeks leading up to the sale. Jersey based collector David Gainsborough Roberts has spent the last 40 years amassing an extraordinary selection of memorabilia from the worlds of film and entertainment, royalty and politics, sport, and travel and exploration. His collection includes personal possessions of an array of celebrities as diverse as Queen Victoria, Sir Winston Churchill, Lawrence of Arabia, the Duchess of Windsor, William Harrison “Jack” Dempsey and Captain Robert Falcon Scot. Highlights include the Titanic keys(£7,000-10,000); a pair of ear clips owned and worn by the Duchess of Windsor (£8,000-12,000); a silk head scarf and agal owned by Lawrence of Arabia (£3,000-5,000 and £10,000-15,000); and a Stetson presented to Sir Winston Churchill by the City of Calgary (£4,000-6,000).

    A further highlight is the Leica Camera Family Tree, an artwork displaying 107 Leica cameras that chart the history of the camera maker from c1923 to 2006 (£350,000-450,000).  Here is a small selection:

    WILLIAM HARRISON "JACK" DEMPSEY (1895-1983) A 14K GOLD, DIAMOND AND ENAMEL WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE BELT 1919

    WILLIAM HARRISON “JACK” DEMPSEY (1895-1983)
    A 14K GOLD, DIAMOND AND ENAMEL WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE BELT 1919 Courtesy Christie’s Images Ltd., 2016  UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR £25,000

    A set of keys to the Titanic

    RMS Titanic – set of four keys on brass fob c1912 (£7,000-10,000) Courtesy Christie’s Images Ltd., 2016  UPDATE: THESE SOLD FOR £20,000

    A PAINTING OF QUEEN VICTORIA’S YACHT ESCORT AT CORK HARBOUR

    Thursday, February 18th, 2016

    George Mounsey Wheatley Atkinson - The Royal Yacht squadron bringing Queen Victoria to Cork Harbour, August 1849.

    George Mounsey Wheatley Atkinson (1806-1884) – The Royal Yacht Squadron bringing Queen Victoria to Cork Harbour, August 1849.  UPDATE: THIS SOLD FOR A HAMMER PRICE OF 28,000

    A rare painting of the Royal Yacht Squadron escorting Queen Victoria to Cork Harbour in August 1849 will highlight the sale at Woodwards  on March 12.  Visual records of this event – for which the harbour town of Cove was renamed Queenstown  which remained its name until the late 1920’s when it reverted to the Irish name Cobh (pronounced cove) – are very rare.  It was as Queenstown that it achieved worldwide fame as the last port of call of the Titanic and the place to where bodies recovered from the Lusitania were taken and eventually buried.   Queenstown provided hundreds of thousands of Irish emigrants with a last heartbreaking glimpse of their home country.

    The Cobh based painter George Mounsey Wheatley Atkinson provided one of the rare visual records of this event. He made several paintings of  the Royal Squadron in the harbour and the landing of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Woodwards say that apart from a lithograph based on a drawing by one of the ship’s officers published in aid of the female orphan asylum in Cork  and some wood engravings in the Illustrated London News  that Atkinson’s paintings appear to be the only visual records to have survived. A one time ship’s carpenter, inspector of shipping and self taught marine painter, George Mounsey Wheatley Atkinson was one of a family of Cobh painters. Now estimated at 25,000-25,000 it was last sold for 40,000 a couple of decades ago.

    QUEEN VICTORIA IN CORK HARBOUR

    Sunday, March 20th, 2011

    The work by Atkinson (click on image to enlarge)

    WITH the planned visit of Queen Elizabeth to Ireland in May there is something very timely about this painting included in Woodwards auction in Cork on April 6.   The work, by George Mounsey Wheatley Atkinson depicts the Royal Yacht squadron bringing Queen Victoria to Cork Harbour in August 1849. George Mounsey Atkinson mounted an exhibition of his maritime paintings for the visit and produced several different paintings of an event which resulted in the name of the town being changed from Cove to Queenstown.  The work is estimated at 20,000-30,000.

    UPDATE: It sold for a hammer price of 20,000.