Queen Victoria

Queen Victoria (1819-1901), Reigned 1837-1901.

Commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery and executed in Von Angeli's studio by his student Bertha Muller. This portrait represents the eighty-year-old Queen Victoria as she neared the end of her sixty-three year reign. She is dressed in black with a white widow's cap to signify her mourning for her husband, Prince Albert, who died in 1861 almost thirty-eight years earlier. The painting is a copy after an original portrait by the Austrian painter Baron Heinrich von Angeli, made for the queen's own collection (Royal Collection). Von Angeli was a royal favourite who executed many portraits of the queen and her family. Her youngest child, Princess Beatrice, read aloud to her mother during sittings for the original portrait, which the queen described as 'wonderfully good'.