Signed with monogram and dated l.r.: RTP/1887

Watercolour over pencil heightened with white

16.5 by 24 cm, 6 ½ by 9 ½ ins.

Pritchett was a talented and versatile artist who also earned a reputation as a traveller, lecturer, illustrator, painter and even gun maker. He became a favourite artist of Queen Victoria’s as early as 1868, when the monarch acquired two of Pritchett’s watercolours of Scotland. He was subsequently commissioned to record some eighty occasions in the life of the Royal Family, including the events of the Golden and Diamond Jubilees in 1887 and 1897, the state funeral of the great Liberal Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone and numerous Royal christenings. In 1887 Pritchett was commissioned to make eight paintings for the Golden Jubilee celebrations. The present work is likely to be the artist’s own study for a work of the same title now in the Royal Collection (RCIN 920805). Although almost identical in composition, this watercolour focuses only on the central section of what can be viewed in the final painting. Some fifty foreign kings and heads of states attended the banquet in the Ball Supper Room in Buckingham Palace on 21^st June 1887. Pritchett’s watercolour shows Queen Victoria herself to the far left of the painting with the King of Denmark on her right. Further to the right are the Princess and Prince of Wales (the future King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra) and the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh (Queen Victoria’s son Alfred, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha and his wife Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna of Russia).