Windsor Castle reopens with ‘panto’ pictures (oh, yes it does)
FAIRY-TALE paintings created for wartime pantomimes put on by the Queen when she was a girl are to go on display to the public, after the portraits covering them were removed during refurbishment at Windsor Castle.
The paintings, which depict characters in popular fairy stories, were made on leftover wallpaper by a teenage evacuee art student during the Second World War, and were mounted on frames in the Waterloo Chamber.
There, the then Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret starred in amateur pantomimes to raise money for the Royal Household Wool Fund, which in turn supplied yarn to make blankets for soldiers at the Front.
As the war ended and Windsor Castle returned to its usual state, portraits by Sir Thomas Lawrence were put back into the frames, hiding the colourful temporary art works.
From today, castle visitors can view the 16 newly-revealed pictures, as the visitor attraction reopens.
A spokesman for the Royal Collection said: “At the beginning of the war, the series of portraits by Sir Thomas Lawrence that usually line the walls of the Waterloo Chamber were removed from their frames for safekeeping.
“To make the space more festive, 16 ‘pantomime pictures’ were commissioned to cover the bare walls. Teenage evacuee and part-time art student Claude Whatham was asked to recreate fairy-tale characters on wallpaper.”
The Palace of Holyroodhouse, the Royal Mews at Buckingham Palace, and The Queen’s Galleries in London and Edinburgh, as well as Royal Collection Trust shops, also open their doors to the public today.