Watercolour by Fortuné de Fournier

Watercolour of Queen Victoria in her dressing room at St Cloud

Queen Victoria stayed at the former royal residence of St Cloud (outside Paris) throughout her visit to Napoleon III in August 1855. She used the suite of rooms normally occupied by the Empress, and found them 'quite lovely'. This watercolour of the dressing room, with Queen Victoria seated at the dressing table, was commissioned from Fortuné de Fournier as a memento of the visit. St Cloud was destroyed in the course of the Franco-Prussian War, less than twenty years after the Queen's visit.