From 8 March 2023 to 25 June 2023 the Wallace Collection in London has a special one-room display called “The Queen and her Corgis”, showing photographs of the late Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom and her beloved Pembroke Welsh corgis. She owned over thirty of these dogs throughout her life. Each decade of her 96-year-long life will be marked by a single image that captures Her Majesty and her love of the breed. They were always by her side from an early age.
The Wallace Collection furthermore shows its major exhibition “Portraits of Dogs: From Gainsborough to Hockney” from 29 March 2023 to 15 October 2023.
In 1933, when the Queen was 7 years old, she and her sister Princess Margaret were given a pair of dogs called Jane and Dookie by their father, the future King George VI. The earliest known images of her with dogs were taken in July 1936 in the garden of 145 Piccadilly, where she grew up. On her 18th birthday Elizabeth received her own corgi, Susan, from which many of her later dogs were descendants. Some dogs were dorgis, descendants of her corgis and the dachshund Pipkin of her sister Margaret. Sometimes the dogs even accompanied the Queen during her work. The dogs sometimes appeared on official photos and even starred with her in the James Bond video on the occasion of the opening of the Olympic Summer Games 2012 in London.
The Wallace Collection
Hertford House
Manchester Square
London
United Kingdom
Opening hours: open daily from 10-17
