Windsor Castle bust of Prince Albert reattributed to Princess Victoria, 160 years later

A stone bust of Prince Albert at Windsor Castle has been reattributed to Princess Victoria, the couple’s eldest daughter, rather than the celebrated sculptor long credited with the piece. Albert, consort to Queen Victoria, died in 1861 at age 42, and the bust depicts him aged about 23. The sculpture was given to Queen Victoria as a Christmas present in 1864 by Victoria and her husband, the Crown Prince of Prussia, and it has since been a centerpiece in Windsor Castle’s St George’s Hall.

Art historian Jonathan Marsden, former director of the Royal Collection, concluded that the bust could not have been by Robert William Sievier, the sculptor previously associated with it. In examining archival correspondence between Queen Victoria and her daughter, Marsden found clues that pointed to Princess Victoria as the creator. He described the bust as a work that offers insight into a family narrative and the enduring role of sculpture in royal memory. The discovery emerges from Marsden’s work toward the Royal Collection’s first comprehensive catalogue of sculpture.

The elder Victoria and Albert’s daughter Victoria, then 21, was deeply engaged with the arts and shared with her parents a lifelong interest in sculpture. Correspondence from Berlin shows the young princess describing her effort as a piece that fully engrosses her and that she hoped her mother would approve. The Queen’s reply reportedly noted that she liked the bust “extremely,” while joking that the nose could be a touch thicker. Victoria and her husband, who would become the Crown Prince of Prussia, presented the bust to the Queen for Christmas in 1864, and it has remained on display in St George’s Hall since.

The discovery is set against a broader pattern in which Victoria used sculpture to preserve memories of family members. A separate early work, a bust of the young Prince Albert by Emil Wolff given by the prince to his fiancée in 1839, was historically kept by Queen Victoria beside her desk at Buckingham Palace for decades. Victoria also commissioned female sculptors to portray her growing family. Mary Thornycroft, a prominent sculptor and tutor to Victoria’s daughter Princess Louise, produced several works for the Queen, underscoring the royal family’s engagement with sculpture as a means of memorializing loved ones.

Marsden’s findings are part of the new catalogue European Sculpture in the Collection of His Majesty The King, produced by Modern Art Press in association with the Royal Collection Trust and published tomorrow. The book marks the culmination of a 30-year project to document the Royal Collection’s sculpture and to provide researchers with a foundation for future scholarship. Marsden said sculpture often fades from view, but close examination can reveal high-quality works with stories that illuminate royal history. The reattribution of the Windsor Castle bust adds a new dimension to the long-standing narrative around Albert and Victoria’s memory, offering visitors a more nuanced understanding of how the monarchy has memorialized its past through art.

Princess Victoria, the first of nine children Victoria and Albert had together, died in August 1901, seven months after her mother. The new catalogue’s revelations, including the reattribution, aim to enrich visitors’ experience of Windsor Castle’s collections by providing context about the artists, patrons, and historical moments that shaped these notable works.