The Great Exhibition: France No.2 dated 1852 (w/c & bodycolour on paper)

A watercolour showing some of the French display at the Great Exhibition: the exhibits include the sideboard by A.G. Fourdinois with its sculptured pilasters, and figures representing Tea, Coffee, Wine and Dessert, supported on hounds. This is one of a series of forty-nine watercolours commissioned by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert illustrating the various national sections and displays of materials and objects at the Exhibition. Joseph Nash made forty-three of them, and Louis Haghe painted six. The watercolours were commissioned for the purpose of reproduction as chromolithographs, and thus were a permanent visual record of the temporary spectacle. These chromolithographs were published by Messrs Dickinson of Bond Street in two volumes with accompanying letterpress descriptions in 1854 as Dickinson's Comprehensive Pictures of the Great Exhibition of 1851.