The arts were an important shared enthusiasm of Queen Victoria and her consort, Prince Albert, throughout their marriage. Of particular personal significance for them were the hundreds of watercolors they commissioned to form a pictorial record of their public and private lives together, which they arranged in a series of volumes, called by Victoria the “View Albums.” Themes of these watercolors ranged from events in the lives of the royal family to the spectacle and pageantry of the court, from the Crimean War to the industrialization of the Victorian age.