Learn more about the photographic techniques available in the mid-19th century
Learn more about the photographic techniques available in the mid-19th century
Carbon print | 21.9 x 19.7 cm (image) | RCIN 2900013
In the early months of 1854, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert commissioned the photographer Roger Fenton (1819–69) to take a series of portraits of the royal couple and their children. This photograph is from a sitting in February.
The Queen is depicted surrounded by her four eldest children. She is posed and dressed, not as monarch, but as mother: a tartan shawl over her shoulders, a pair of scissors tied to her waist, and her right arm holding her daughter, Princess Alice.