Her Majesty, Queen Victoria
December 1866
Medium
Albumen silver print
Dimensions
Image/paper: 16 × 12.6 cm (6 5/16 × 5 in.); Mount: 39.2 × 28 cm (15 7/16 × 11 1/16 in.)
Classification
albumen silver print
Department
Photography and Media
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
46937
Art Historical Context
In December 1866, French photographer André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri captured this dignified portrait of *Her Majesty, Queen Victoria using the albumen silver print process, a hallmark of mid-19th-century photography. Disdéri, renowned for inventing the carte de visite format—a small, affordable calling-card-sized photograph—produced this image measuring 16 × 12.6 cm on a larger 39.2 × 28 cm mount. The queen, who reigned from 1837 to 1901, gazes directly at the viewer with regal poise, embodying the era's imperial grandeur during the height of the British Empire. The albumen silver print medium...
About the Artist
André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri · 1819–1889
**André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri** (1819–1889) was a pioneering French photographer whose innovations transformed portraiture into a mass medium during the Second Empire. Born on March 28, 1819, in Paris, Disdéri pursued diverse careers in commerce, acting, and politics early on, while studying art amid personal hardships following his father's death, which compelled him to support his mother, sibli...