The gown worn by Queen Alexandra for her Coronation is one of more than 150 works of art from going on show tomorrow.
The gown joins a never-before-exhibited royal portrait of Queen Mary and a wartime portrayal of North Queensferry in The Edwardians: Age of Elegance at The King’s Gallery at the Palace of Holyroodhouse.
The exhibit explores the lives of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra – Queen Elizabeth II’s great-grandparents – and their son George V and his wife Mary during a period of opulence and fast-paced change.
Queen Alexandra selected the female-led Parisian fashion house Morin Blossier to design her 1902 Coronation ensemble, which included a mauve velvet mantle and a gown laced with thousands of tiny gold spangles.
Stokes
Designed knowing it would be worn for the first Coronation at Westminster Abbey to benefit from electric lighting, the dress broke with traditional white and would likely have glittered in an unprecedented fashion.
Royal Collection Trust conservators spent more than 100 hours preparing it ahead of the London showing of the exhibition and the late Queen’s outfit joins her husband’s for their first ever display in Scotland.
Visitors can recognise Alexandra’s ensemble in the monumental painting The Anointing of Queen Alexandra at the Coronation of King Edward VII, by favoured Danish artist Laurits Tuxen, displayed alongside her jewellery and Edward’s cloth-of-gold Coronation mantle.
Kathryn Jones, curator of the exhibition, said: “Alexandra’s choice of a shimmering gold fabric would have been incredibly novel; while the dress may have darkened over time, descriptions in contemporary newspapers described the new queen as appearing in an extraordinary blaze of golden light thanks to the new electric lighting.
“It’s the first time the dress has been displayed outside of London, and is one of many powerful examples of how Edward and Alexandra, followed by George and Mary, held onto tradition but were not afraid to do it in their own way.
“We hope that visitors to the exhibition will come away with a renewed appreciation for this fascinating period, as Britain stood on the cusp of the 20th century, before the upheaval of World War I.”
The Edwardian period began with the emergence of Edward and Alexandra as the centre of a vibrant and youthful court that celebrated new ideas and fashions, as Queen Victoria receded from public life following the death of Prince Albert.
Queen Alexandra at the Coronation of King
Edward VII, 1902–3
The exhibition immerses visitors in the period – from Edward and Alexandra’s wedding in 1863 to the end of the Great War in 1918 – via explorations of their lifestyle, personal interests and international travel, with a free multimedia guide narrated by Downton Abbey’s Hugh Bonneville.
The two royal couples travelled more widely than any sovereigns before them, forging diplomatic links and learning about different cultures.
George and Mary grew particularly interested in the Indian subcontinent, while Edward commissioned foremost landscape photographer of the period, Francis Bedford, to record his tour of the Middle East.
The King’s Gallery offers £1 tickets for visitors receiving Universal Credit and other named benefits.
Other concessionary rates are available, including discounted tickets for young people, half-price entry for children (with under-fives free), and the option to convert standard tickets bought directly from Royal Collection Trust into a one-year pass for unlimited re-entry for 12 months.
