Photography Collection Celebrating Queen Marie

Queen Maria was the great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria of England, and married Prince Ferdinand in 1893

Ana-Maria Cononovici, 16.09.2025, 13:00

Piatra Neamţ, Valea Jiului, Alba Iulia, Fălticeni, Bucharest, Piteşti, Curtea de Argeş, Cluj are some of the cities where the archival photography exhibition, dedicated to Queen Maria of Romania on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of her birth, by the curator and associate producer at Chainsaw Europe, Dan Drăghicescu, has stopped.

For several months, Dan Drăghicescu has been traveling around the country, presenting the public with new images that reflect fragments of both the Queen’s presence in politics and her personal life.

Dan Drăghicescu, associate producer of Chainsaw Europe told us the story of this exhibition:

“In this anniversary year, 2025, it is 150 years since the birth of Queen Maria, and on this occasion we opened an archival photography exhibition, which we researched in the development of the documentary film project together with John Florescu, “Maria, the Heart of Romania”. And most of the photos found later through research with experts from America and Britain brought to light unseen archive photos, most of which were colorized in Paris, not with Artificial Intelligence, but many never made it into the movie. And then I thought of making an archive exhibition, for the first time, never before seen archives with Queen Maria, which I dedicated to this anniversary, a hundred and a half. We know, the Queen was born in 1875, in Kent, in the south of Great Britain, and left us in 1938, in Sinaia.”

What do we see in the exhibition? Dan Drăghicescu:

“It is an exhibition that includes 20 paintings. We included the Queen’s passions for animals, she is a great lover of animals, especially horses and hunting greyhounds, and we see pictures of Her Majesty with horses in the meadows around Peleş and Pelişor, we see her with horses even in Germany, alongside her cousin, George V, the future king of Great Britain, we see her with hunting dogs, also in the Sinaia area. These photos were immortalized by an American soldier and were archived in the Archives of the American Congress in Washington. We also see Queen Maria’s passion for Romanian peasant shirts, also in this exhibition, in which she wears this traditional blouse, La Blouse Roumaine, with pride, when she offers aid in Neamţ and Iaşi counties, after the First World War, aid received from the American Red Cross. We also see her together with her favorite daughter, the youngest, Princess Ileana, who later became Mother Alexandra, who in 1919 was declared by the international press as the most beautiful child in Europe. Also in this exhibition we find her three cousins, who called for and maintained the First World War, we see Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany, in military uniform, Tsar Nicholas of Russia, also in military, royal uniform and George V, King of Great Britain, also in gala uniform, colorized photographs in Paris in 2019.”

Dan Drăghicescu also told us where the exhibition traveled:

“The exhibition began in Piatra Neamţ, a county full of history. I decided to start from here, especially since the Queen also had an affinity for Piatra Neamţ and Neamţ county, because during the war she stayed right in the Neamţ area, and returned after the war to show her gratitude for the inhabitants of the county, to Piatra Neamţ and Bicaz. In Piatra Neamţ, she organized a community that she called “The Housewives’ Circle”. And today, there is a restaurant with this name, in the same location, on a hill from which Piatra Neamţ has a magnificent view. Later, we arrived in the Jiu Valley, where we presented it in the Mining Museum, we even called it a living exhibition, because I was helped by a theater troupe from Petroşani, which staged a play on the occasion of the exhibition. Later it was moved to Alba Iulia and I was honored to be in the Union Hall. From Alba Iulia the exhibition was moved to Iaşi, in the Palace of Culture.”

It was followed by Fălticeni, Bucharest, at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where it is exhibited in the Hall of Honor, and then it will be moved to the Grand Hall of the Academy of Economic Studies in Bucharest, and then it will head to Piteşti and Curtea de Argeş, in October, in Cluj, at the IV Gemina Military Base.

The great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria of England, who married Prince Ferdinand in 1893, took steps and used her connections with the royal families in Europe to ensure that Romania was respected internationally. In 1919, at the Paris Peace Conference, she spoke about Romania’s problems with American President W. Wilson, British Prime Minister Lloyd George, and French Prime Minister George Clemenceau, playing an important role in promoting the image of her country, Romania.