Jane Wildgoose: Beyond All Price

It was in the Green Boudoir, in 1890, that Ferdinand presented Queen Victoria with an 18th-century fan set with diamonds as a memento of her visit to Waddesdon. A contemporary illustration in the Illustrated London News of 14th May 1890 shows the Queen planting a fir tree, dressed from head to foot in black. Widowed in 1861, Queen Victoria remained in mourning for the last four decades of her reign until her own death in 1901, and presided over an era in which attention to ritual, costume and accessories associated with death and commemoration assumed unprecedented importance at all levels of society. Although Waddesdon was celebrated in Baron Ferdinand’s day for the luxury of its house-parties and entertainments, at the heart of his own life may be discerned the shadow of the death of his stillborn child, and his wife Evelina, in childbirth, in 1866, just eighteen months after they married. This installation reflects upon Ferdinand’s words about the associations, memories and stimulus to the imagination that old objects may evoke, in relation to some of the remaining fragments of material associated with Rothschild deaths and the wider context of the cult of mourning during the 19th century. Offering a direct counterpoint to the dazzling virtuosity, rarity and connoisseur’s worth of the objects in the Waddesdon Bequest - Ferdinand’s legacy to the British Museum on his death in 1898 - the value of this more intimate material, which might instead be perceived to be “beyond all price”, lies in the associations it can evoke.

Suitable for
Family friendly

Admission
Normal admission charges apply

Website
www.waddesdon.org.uk/collection/exhibitions/jane-wildgoose-beyond-all-price

Source: http://www.culture24.org.uk/mw795?id=EVENT527433