The Edwardians: Age of Elegance – no end of sumptuous objects at the King's Gallery

The splendour of Edward VII and Queen Alexandra is on display at Buckingham Palace

A portrait of The Family of Queen Victoria in 1887 by Laurits Regner Tuxen
The Family of Queen Victoria in 1887 by Laurits Regner Tuxen
(Image credit: ARTGEN / Alamy Stock Photo)

When Queen Victoria died in 1901, having spent decades in black-clad mourning, a "stuffy establishment" passed with her, said Rachel Campbell-Johnston in The Times. By the time of her son's coronation in 1902, to the strains of Elgar's "Pomp and Circumstance Marches", Britain must already have seemed a different place – a land of hope and glory, but also of "glamour and extravagance".

A "portly glutton" with an insatiable appetite for the finer things, Edward VII embodied his pleasure-loving age. He reigned for nine years with his Danish-born consort Queen Alexandra – an elegant woman whose taste in dresses and jewellery set trends in their gilded circle; even her limp was copied by courtiers (they called it the Alexandra glide). They were succeeded by George V, their son, and Queen Mary, who also travelled the empire widely, cramming their residences with yet more precious art and objets.

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The royal family lived in splendour: Edward VII liked to carouse with his mistresses in a copper bath filled with champagne; he kept his cigarettes in a diamond-encrusted Fabergé case. And so the show, which begins in 1863 with his marriage to Alexandra, contains no end of sumptuous objects, said Alastair Sooke in The Daily Telegraph, including "a brooch with emeralds thicker than my thumb, and a fan with a poor hummingbird set, like fruit upon plate, within a disc of fluffy white feathers".

We see some of the paintings the couples collected – by the likes of Frederic Leighton and Lawrence Alma-Tadema; and the exquisite trinkets they acquired: "ornate candelabra and hand mirrors, cigarette cases and snuffboxes, and stunning Cartier 'objets de luxe'". If all that were not grand enough, the second gallery looks at court life, with huge canvasses of lavish state events and portraits of the royals in all their finery.

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