Victoria was not a typical Victorian

She is portrayed as a repressed and melancholy widow who spent much of her life clad in black.

But a new art exhibition will challenge this traditional view of Queen Victoria by revealing her as a passionate, open-minded woman.

Victoria & Albert: Art & Love is the first-ever show to focus on the enthusiasm for art shared by Britain's longest-reigning monarch and her husband, Prince Albert.

It reveals the couple's starkly-differing attitudes towards works of art, with the queen favouring titillating images featuring plenty of naked flesh, while her husband appears prudish by comparison.

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Another example of Queen Victoria surprising society with her unconventional enthusiasm for nudity is given in the exhibition's catalogue, which features Life Study of a Male Nude by William Mulready, the Irish painter.

The queen bought the picture following a visit to an exhibition of contemporary art at Gore House, Kensington, in 1853 which included several drawings of nude men by the artist.

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Lynda Nead, professor of History of Art at Birkbeck, University of London, and a specialist in Victorian visual culture, said: "There is a generalised assumption about Victorian prudery and the Victorians as a society who couldn't bear thinking or speaking about nudity.

"But this exhibition may prompt a rethink of that view, as it shows that the queen had a more varied attitude to sexual morality in art and culture."

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