Haag’s Luncheon at Cairn Lochan shows the royal family picnicking in Scotland.
Painted in 1868, Haag based the scene on an episode in 1861, three months before Prince Albert’s death. Yet, Haag shows the Queen dressed in her habitual black. She is accompanied by Albert (the tall man beside her). The man kneeling is Victoria’s servant or gillie in Scotland at Balmoral, then “personal servant “who she writes “always attends me when I go out—walking, riding and all our traveling expeditions.” *
There is a presumption that sometime after Prince Albert’s death, Victoria secretly married John Brown. * They were a constant couple until Brown died in 1883.
* According to John Kerr, Queen Victoria’s Scottish Dairies (1992), he was invaluable, shrewd, and trustworthy.
Featured Image: Carl Haag. Luncheon at Cairn Lochan, 16 October 1861(1868). British Museum. John Brown, a Scots hunting and fishing guide (or gillie), kneels as he serves her.
See Carl Haag. Luncheon at Cairn Lochan, 16 October 1861(1868). British Museum; John Madden. Mrs. Brown (1997). Screenplay by Jeremy Brook; See Delia Miller’s Queen Victoria’s Scottish Highlands. London: Philip Wilson Pub. 1985; Jeremy Brown. Mrs. Brown, A Screenplay. London: Methuen, 1997