The Ballroom, Buckingham Palace, 17 June 1856

Copies after the Hours of the Day and Night, frescoes which were widely attributed to Raphael in the nineteenth century, can clearly be seen on the left-hand side of Louis Haghe’s watercolour of the new ballroom at Buckingham Palace. Completed in 1856, its interior decoration was planned by Albert and his artistic advisor Ludwig Grüner. Elizabeth Eastlake, an art critic and wife of the Director of the National Gallery, pronounced herself ’enchanted’ with the design.