The “passionate” bond Queen Elizabeth II of England (1952-2022) had with her dogs Corgis over nine decades and that made him bring out his “closer” side documented in a photo series Presented in London today.
With the name “The Queen and Her Corgis” (The Queen and Her Corgis), the careful selection of just 10 black and white and color snaps chosen from around 5,000 will officially open tomorrow, Wednesday, at London’s Wallace Collection Museum, where they will remain on display until June 25.
In all the sovereign who died on September 8 at the age of 96She poses in different situations, formal, informal, relaxed, smiling, as a girl or at official acts, always accompanied by her beloved pets, of which she had more than 30.
In an interview with EFE, the gallery’s director, Xavier Bray, recalled the monarch’s “passion” for the Corgi, a Welsh breed used as a herding dog and “which entered the British court when the Queen was about 7 years old was”.
The “fascinating” bond forged between Isabel II and this breed of dog was “a constant” that shaped their lives and made citizens appreciate them “a more human and closer side”, Bray explained.
“They give her a human touch. You can get close to her through her dogs, it’s her soul that survives through this breed. And it’s something very English that the dog can express the ‘alter ego’,” says the expert.
A life through his dogs
The room where the paintings are exhibited It has a curious dog line pedigree, started with ‘Susan’, the first Corgi dog the Sovereign had when she came of age in 1944, a gift from her father, King George VI.
In another of the exposed images, Bray comments on capturing it “an unfortunate moment” in Elizabeth II’s life when one of the corgis “falls in love” from a dachshund that belonged to Princess Margarita, her sister, an animal idyll that gave rise to a hybrid breed called “Dorgi”.
The exhibition concludes with an emotional scene that went viral after the monarch’s death: the image of her last two corgis waiting outside St George’s Chapel in Windsor while their owner’s body was buried, a photo that ” this love has summed up English for dogs since the fifteenth century, a very remarkable phenomenon,” adds Bray.
Inside the room is another “gorgeous” photograph of the Queen at Balmoral, Scotland, sitting in front of a waterfall, “and where you see her happy, very calm, relaxed.”
Bray notes that the composition of this snapshot is “reminiscent of the 19th-century paintings of Queen Victoria by painters like (the English animal painter) Edwin Henry Landseer.”
In the careful selection, “there is an air of propaganda, a way of humanizing the Queen, since that is how any human being can connect with her (…) Suddenly the old lady from York thinks, ‘(The Queen) it’s like I'”.
The exhibition serves as a prelude to another major exhibition about dogs to be held at the Wallace Collection at the end of March: “Dog Portraits: From Gainsborough to Hockney”.