Ceremony and Celebration: Coronation Day 1953

3 March 2003

An exhibition at the Summer Opening of the State Rooms, Buckingham Palace 

1 August -  28 September 2003

The 50th anniversary of the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II will be celebrated at this year's Summer Opening of Buckingham Palace's State Rooms with the display of Her Majesty's magnificent Coronation Dress and Robe of Estate, and with the first public showing of the entire Coronation frieze by Feliks Topolski (1909-1989), commissioned by HRH The Duke of Edinburgh in 1960. The exhibition will use contemporary television footage to evoke the atmosphere of Coronation Day, 2 June 1953 - the day that heralded the dawn of a 'New Elizabethan Era'.

Described as the 'greatest artistic chronicler of our times', Feliks Topolski witnessed the Coronation as an official artist. He had also attended the final rehearsal on the previous day. His commission was to produce a permanent record of the occasion for a specific location, the Lower Corridor in Buckingham Palace. Topolski divided his pictorial narrative into two  parts - the procession to Westminster Abbey and The Queen's procession out of the Abbey after the service. The painting was made in 14 sections, each well over a metre high, and measures nearly 30 metres in total.

Topolski's ebullient style captures with great vivacity the reactions of the crowds and the pageantry of a State occasion that has remained essentially the same for a thousand years. As the artist said, 'these  panoramas are not meant to be a diligent document of the processional order, uniforms - robes and likenesses. It was an agreement with my patron that all these should be subjected to the compositional sweep, the calligraphy of movement - to the 'mood' of my interpretation; that they should not be information-bound, but be 'contemporary paintings', independent of dead-wood conventions'.

The Coronation dress of white satin was created by the royal couturier Norman Hartnell, whose sketches were unveiled to the press the day before the event. The dress's exquisite embroidery in gold and silver thread and pastel-coloured silks is encrusted with seed pearls and crystals to create a glittering lattice-work effect. The tiered design incorporates the floral emblems of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth, running like shimmering garlands across the skirt. 

The Robe of Estate, worn by The Queen when leaving Westminster Abbey after the Coronation, was designed and embroidered by the Royal School of Needlework. It is of English purple silk-velvet, woven in two 22-metre pieces, and  measures over 6½ metres in length from the shoulder to the tip of the train. The embroidered cipher of The Queen and border of wheat ears and olive branches, symbolising peace and plenty, took a total of 3,500 hours to complete by a team of twelve seamstresses working in shifts.

The accompanying Royal Collection publication, Ceremony and Celebration: Coronation Day 1953, has 96-pages and 65 colour illustrations, price £10.00 (Softback).

Further information is available from Public Relations and Marketing, the Royal Collection, telephone: 020-7839 1377, fax: 020-7839 8168, e-mail: press@royalcollection.org.uk

Note to Editors

Born in Poland in 1907, Feliks Topolski trained as an artist at the Warsaw Academy and quickly established a reputation as a painter and illustrator. Sent to Britain by a Polish journal to report on the Silver Jubilee of King George V and Queen Mary in 1935, he settled in London and became a British citizen in 1947. His first commissions were as a newspaper and journal illustrator, and he produced his own illustrated publications throughout his life. The most famous of these was Topolski's Chronicle, published fortnightly between 1953 and 1979. Topolski was an official war artist and continued to document political upheaval and its consequences during his extensive travels throughout the world. 

In the post-War period he turned to large-scale work, including murals (The  East (1949-50) for Pandit Nehru and The Cavalcade of the Commonwealth for the 1951 Festival of Britain). His skill as a draughtsman led to the commission to produce portraits to accompany the BBC television series Face to Face. The greatest monument to Topolski's skill as a chronicler of contemporary life is the huge mural, The Memoir of the Century, under one of the arches beneath Hungerford Bridge.

Admission details for the Summer Opening of the State Rooms, Buckingham Palace

1 August to 28 September 2003.  Timed tickets. 09:30-16:30 every day (last admission 16:15).  Admission to the State Rooms and Coronation exhibition: Adult £12.00,  Over 60/Student £10.00,  Under 17  £6.00,  Family  (2 adults, 3 under 17s)  £30.00, Under 5 free.

Further press information is available from Public Relations and Marketing, the Royal Collection, telephone: 020-7839 1377, e-mail: press@royalcollection.org.uk