These drawings all relate to William Quiller Orchardson's painting 'Four Generations', also known as Windsor Castle, 1899' (1899; Government Art Collection). This is a group portrait of Queen Victoria, with her son, grandson and great grandson, the future Kings Edward VII, Edward VIII and George V. Many of the drawings are hazy and indistinct but most are quite close to the composition of the finished work.

According to Orchardson's daughter, Hilda: 'Queen Victoria...was loved and venerated more as the Great Mother than as Ruler of 'her people'. My father, therefore, determined to paint her as the woman of intense family affections and not as the Great Queen. So he invented the little scene (which very likely actually occurred) of the small great-grandson presenting a bouquet to his great-grandmother, with the two princes of intervening generations looking on with fatherly and grandfatherly pride'.

Despite Orchardson's wish to show familial closeness and affection, the gap between the close group of sons and grandsons on the left and the seated Queen on the right instead creates a sense of her detachment and formality.

There are oil studies for the painting in the National Portrait Gallery and Russell Cotes Art Gallery, Bournemouth.

All objects in this group