The Family of Edward VII and Queen Alexandra

[grandduchessella]

[kmerov]

An illustration from 1888

[Olga Maria]

Thanks for all those new pics, Veronica, GDElla and Kmerov!
Posted before but this is bigger:

From Picture history

[Rani]

You are right, that photograph is part of a series taken in July 1867, few months after the birth of princess Louise, when Alexandra was still in the process of recovery from her illness.

That´s really intimate with her open hair.

[Maria_Pavlovna]

^ what do you mean by that?

[Eric_Lowe]

Rani was saying that she let her hair down. 

[Maria_Pavlovna]

Yes, i know that

 but intimate?

[ThePrincessPerfect]

It's relaxed, casual, candid, with her hair down like that

[CountessKate]

Yes, i know that

 but intimate?

Putting your hair up, for a female, was a rite of passage distinguishing a girl from a woman and was a very important feminine symbol of adulthood and when you started to be brought out in society (if you were in the middle and upper classes); if you look at pictures of Queen Victoria and the Empress Elisabeth of Austria, the two portraits by Winterhalter of them with their hair down (in fact I think there are two versions of Elisabeth with her hair down) were intimate portraits not intended for public consumption and were kept by their husbands for private view (Franz Joseph's in his study, which says something about where he spent most of his time!).  Photographs of women in a state of undress, early Victorian erotica, often depicted women with their hair down as part of the general titillation.  I've always been curious about this series of photographs as they indicate a greater intimacy (to contemporary eyes) than was at all usual.  It has no erotic charge - Alexandra is dressed from neck to toe for one thing - but it must have represented something quite different at the time - a sort of family intimacy which royalty didn't normally project.  Perhaps this was to combat the developing criticism with the Wales' social life - suggesting they had a respectable home life too.

[Maria_Pavlovna]

Ah, I see, thank you for the info.

[Speedycat]

Hopefully not already posted elsewhere.  Didn't see it in this thread and it's new to me:

[Speedycat]

A pretty one of husband and wife.

[Rani]

Hopefully not already posted elsewhere.  Didn't see it in this thread and it's new to me:

She looks like the elderly sister of the children.

[Grace]

She would have been 30 at the most when this photo was taken...a time when most women these days are only thinking of having children.

[Eric_Lowe]

But Alix recovered her figure quite quickly...