GEORGE HENRY ANDREWS (1816 - 1898)

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"Royal Visits"

Royal Visits. Addresses Presented to H.R.H. The Prince of Wales During His State Visit to British North America, with the Replies Thereto, July, August, and September, 1860.

"During the whole of the afternoon, and in fact during the whole day, the entire front of the city was crowded with persons, to catch the first glimpse of the Hero. At two o’clock, a huge black mass of smoke appeared directly over Point Levi, it was surmised that it must be from the royal vessels’ funnels, and in this the people were not mistaken… Then came the thundering and deafening royal salutes from the three men-of-war, from the Citadel, the Durham Terrace, and the Grand Battery. (The guns of the latter had not been fired for thirty or fourty years previously.) What a noise! It fairly shook Quebec again and again."

George Henry Andrews was a professional engineer, marine painter, watercolourist and illustrator. Born in Britain in 1816, he began exhibiting in 1840 and was elected a member of the Old Watercolour Society in 1856. Later he became the Royal Navy Artist and in 1860, at the peak of his career, he accompanied the Prince of Wales (who became Edward VII) on a tour of Canada.

This large-format watercolour by Andrews showing the prince’s ship, the Hero, entering Quebec City was acquired by Uno Langmann Limited in Vancouver after it surfaced in a collection in Eastern Canada. The work, estimated to be worth between $200,000 and $300,000, was subsequently sold and now resides in a permanent collection in Canada.

“You can’t really put a value on something like this — it is absolutely priceless,” says Langmann, whose gallery specializes in European and North American paintings from the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries. “To have this kind of water­colour of a Canadian scene from the 1860s — there is nothing else like it.”