The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall (2003

The Horse Corridor

like so many of the works of art in Clarence House, the paintings in the Horse Corridor reflect the interests of Queen Elizabeth, who was a passionate owner and breeder of racehorses. Her racing career was marked by over four hundred wins, and a number of the pictures in the corridor celebrate her horses and victories on the turf. A horse called The Rip won thirteen races for her; the painting by Peter Biegel shows him going down at Cheltenham. Double Star, Makaldar and Laffy were some of her most successful horses, whose pictures hang in the Horse Corridor.

Queen Elizabeth came from a long line of breeders, trainers and riders. The painting by John Frederick Herring Snr of a bay racehorse called Touchstone with a stable lad commemorates one of the remarkable successes of John Bowes (1811–85). The illegitimate son of one of Queen Elizabeth’s ancestors, the 10th Earl of Strathmore, Bowes had a string of notable wins and bred some of the most influential sires of the nineteenth century.

In 1843 Bowes won the Derby with his horse Cotherstone, sired by Touchstone. An elaborately framed painting that also hangs in the Horse Corridor shows Cotherstone and his jockey surrounded by portraits of Touchstone, his dam, Emma, and two grandsires and grandams.

right The Horse Corridor.

Touchstone, painted to celebrate his victory at the St Leger in 1834, by John Frederick Herring Snr. ‘Cotherstone’, winner of the Derby, 1843, with W. Scott up in the colours of John Bowes Esq., 1843, by John Frederick Herring Snr.

The Garden Room

the garden room was created by Queen Elizabeth from two rooms that formed part of the extension built in the 1870s. The larger of the two rooms was Princess Margaret’s sitting room when she lived at Clarence House with her mother before her marriage in 1960, while the smaller was for the use of her ladyin-waiting. After the death of Queen Elizabeth, the room was completely redecorated for The Prince of Wales, who now uses it for meetings with visiting heads of state and other dignitaries.

The Garden Room contains two striking paintings of birds by Jakob Bogdani. They were purchased by Queen Anne in 1710 and show birds from an aviary at Windsor. Queen Elizabeth used the mid-eighteenth-century writing desk when this room was her study.

right The Garden Room.

Birds in a Landscape, c.1708–10, one of two eighteenth-century paintings of the same name by Jakob Bogdani that hang in the Garden Room. It can be seen next to a tapestry depicting Mahommed Ali’s Massacre of the Mamelukes at Cairo, presented to Queen Victoria by Emperor Napoleon III.

left A quiet corner in the Garden Room.