181 - Eugène Louis Lami,

Eugène Louis Lami, French 1800-1890- The Stuart Ball, Buckingham Palace, 13 June 1851; pencil and watercolour heightened with white on paper, 19 x 32 cm. Provenance: Anon. sale, Bonhams, London, 9 November 2004, lot 15. Private Collection, UK. Note: Lami lived in London from 1848 to 1852, where he received several commissions from Queen Victoria and the royal household, having established connections in Paris with the family of the exiled Duc d’Orléans. The present work depicts the Stuart Ball held at Buckingham Palace on 13 June 1851, the last of three costume balls given by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Lami had been involved in designing costumes for the royal family for several years, and on this occasion the Queen commissioned him to prepare the designs for their costumes. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert are depicted towards the centre-left of the composition. The Queen recorded in her journal on 13 June 1851: 'Our dresses were most exactly carried out from Eugène Lami's drawings' (Delia Millar, The Victorian Watercolours and Drawings in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen, London, 1995). The date ‘1871’ inscribed on the reverse suggests that the present watercolour was executed some twenty years after the event, as a retrospective record of the ball. Another watercolour by Lami of the Stuart Ball is held in the Royal Collection [RCIN 919904]. Lami also depicted other London balls, including The Royal Caledonian Ball, an annual charity ball established in 1849 for the benefit of Scottish charities. A watercolour of the ball sold at Sotheby’s, Paris, on 18 December 2023, lot 832 (€4,826). The identification of the subject as the Stuart Ball was confirmed by Dr Susan Owens of the Royal Collection, Windsor, when offered at Bonhams previously.