Secret lives of Victorian princesses captured in photographs

An exhibition at the Tate Britain gallery which opened on Wednesday gives an unusual insight into the lives of the British royal family in the late 19th century.

A rarely-seen private album in which members of royal family painstakingly re-enacted famous paintings and scenes from the theater is one of the star exhibits in the "Painting with Light" show at the central London gallery.

The album features pictures of several young princesses enjoying themselves, at the naval headquarters that was the home of their father, Prince Alfred Duke of Edinburgh.

The three grand-daughters -- Victoria Melita, Alexandra and Beatrice -- were all princesses and had plenty of spare time at the Plymouth Naval Base.

Scenes reenacted for the camera by the princesses include Sleeping Beauty, Cleopatra, Joan of Arc and Hamlet. There are also tableaus of paintings famous at the time, such as Francesco Gronin's "At the Slave Market" and Marcus Stone's "Two's Company, Three's None."

The picture album is just one of several remarkable exhibits in the show, which traces the creative and technical interplay between photography and painting in the late 19th century and early 20th century.

Exhibits include the earliest forms of color photography from the first decade of the 20th century using the auto-chrome process, and also of three-dimensional photography, which was a popular format among the Victorian middle classes.

The exhibition runs until Sept. 25. Enditem