Colonial Queensland Chalon Head 1882

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Colonial Queensland Chalon Head 1882 5/- Rose

Portrait of Queen Victoria (detail)1837, Royal Collection of Belgium, Brussels, Alfred Chalon (1780-1860) © KIK-IRPA, Brussels

Chalon Head stamp 1882. This image was used for Queensland stamps from 1850-1910.

Alfred Chalon’s 1837 painting of Queen Victoria was the reference for engravings used on a number of British colonies stamps known as the Chalon Head. The portrait was used in Australia on the stamps of Queensland and Van Diemen’s Land/Tasmania; most other colonies used alternative depictions of Queen Victoria.

ARCHIVAL SNAPSHOTS > From the National Philatelic Collection

Portrait of Queen Victoria, 1837, Alfred Chalon, Royal Collection of Belgium, Š KIK-IRPA, Brussels

Original Portrait The portrait head of Queen Victoria came from a painting by Alfred Edward Chalon, inspired by the first public appearance of Victoria as Queen on the occasion of her speech at the House of Lords where she opened the Parliament of the United Kingdom in July 1837. Chalon's work was intended as a gift from Victoria to her mother. In the portrait she is wearing the George IV State Diadem, created in 1820, and the State Robes, a dress and a long royal mantle. Her body is half-turned to the right side, on top of a flight of stairs. While her head is turned to the right, her left hand holds the plinth of a column on which there is a sculpted lion. At that time, this portrait was also known as the "Coronation portrait" and an engraving by Samuel Cousins was distributed to the public on 28 June, 1838.

ARCHIVAL SNAPSHOTS > From the National Philatelic Collection The Artist Alfred Chalon 1780-1860 RA Chalon was born in Geneva, Switzerland but left as a result of troubles arising from the French Revolution. The family eventually settled in London where Alfred and his brother John both became students at the Royal Academy. He was made a full Academician in 1816 and became known for painting miniatures on ivory. He also painted small portraits in watercolour on paper, often about 15 inches high. He was a witty caricaturist, and also painted genre and history subjects. His elegant miniatures and watercolour portraits were hugely fashionable. He was especially popular in court circles and was appointed painter in watercolour to Queen Victoria. He famously said when asked by the Queen whether he was worried by competition from the new invention of photography, “Ah non, Madame, photography can’t flatter!”. The portrait head of Queen Victoria came from a painting by Alfred Edward Chalon, inspired by the first public appearance of Victoria as Queen on the occasion of her speech at the House of Lords where she opened the Parliament of the United Kingdom in July 1837.

Tasmania (Van Diemen’s Land) Chalon Head – Imperforate 1d red, 2s green, 4d blue, 6d purple, 1/- orange

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Queen Victoria, portraiture and Australian stamps Young Queen

Pencil sketch for New South Wales ‘Diadems’ c1851

No sovereign had her image reproduced more often than Queen Victoria. Depictions appeared on medals, shaving cups, gongs, napkin rings, cufflinks, inkwells, paperclips, pipes, tea towels, pot lids, coins, postage stamps and also on Canadian canoes and Australian . prison ships.

Victoria enjoyed many portraits made of her throughout her lifetime, portraits she often commissioned as family gifts or records for the public.

Over the decades her image altered from innocent princess and young Queen to wife, mother, widowed matriarch and moral guardian of the country.

‘Diadems’ 1854-1860 New south Wales

ARCHIVAL SNAPSHOTS > From the National Philatelic Collection Domestic

Queen Victoria 1838

Alfred Chalon (1780-1860) © National Portrait Gallery, Scotland

This watercolour by Chalon was the very first portrait the young queen sat for after her accession to the throne. She is dressed in the robes she wore when Parliament was dissolved after her uncle’s death. Her hat is casually discarded on the floor, she wears a decorative apron which gives a more domestic focus to this and other portraits produced during the middle period of her reign.

Feminine

Queen Victoria 1843

Franz Xavier Winterhalter (1805-1873) German painter and lithographer The Royal Collection © 2010, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

Queen Victoria commissioned Franz Winterhalter to paint this romantic, and quite intimate portrait of her as a gift to her husband Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg Gotha on his 24th birthday. The oval frame, soft face, loose hair and bare shoulders show a more feminine figure.

Sovereign Victoria’s sketch self-portrait shows a reflected gaze which is without hesitation as to its owner’s character as well as her sense of sovereign purpose

Self-portrait, (detail)

Queen Victoria aged 25 1844 The Royal Collection © 2010, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

ARCHIVAL SNAPSHOTS > From the National Philatelic Collection Queen Enthroned

State portrait of Queen Victoria Sir George Hayter, oil on canvas, (1838) National Portrait Gallery.

Photographic reproduction in National Philatelic Collection

(Detail from portrait) © National Portrait Gallery London

Queen on Throne stamp (reprint) (Coronation Throne) 1852-54 Engraving after Sir George Hayter’s State Portrait

Sir George Hayter was the Queen’s “Portrait and Historical Painter” and in 1841 was made “Principal Painter in Ordinary to the Queen”.

He painted several royal ceremonies including Queen Victoria’s coronation of 1837 and marriage of 1840 and also the christening of the Prince of Wales of 1843. He also painted several royal portraits including his most well known work, the State Portrait of the new Queen Victoria. Several versions of this portrait were done, to be sent as diplomatic gifts.

Hayter's active period at court was short-lived because Prince Albert preferred German painters. By the mid-1840s Hayter’s portrait style was considered old-fashioned. He adjusted his type of history painting to suit the more literal taste of the early Victorian era. Although a very simplified interpretation, the fulllength Queen on Throne stamp captures the early Victorian gothic style with the pointed design of the Coronation Throne and in the decorative elements and background borders of the engraved stamp.

ARCHIVAL SNAPSHOTS > From the National Philatelic Collection Widowed matriarch

Queen Victoria ,

Photographer, Alexander Bassano 1885 National Portrait Gallery, London

Queen Victoria,

Diamond Jubilee 1897 Photography W & D Downey Š National Portrait Gallery, London

Commemorative Diamond Jubilee Canada 5c

Definitive stamps 1897-1910 2d, 21/2d New South Wales

Victoria’s interest in portraiture reflected the Victorian interest in realism influenced by the development of photography which was of great interest to the Queen. She kept photographic albums, attended photographic exhibitions and fervently supplied her portraitists with photographs of their subject for reference. Images of Victoria that appeared on stamps were based on engravings or lithographs derived from either photography, paintings or watercolours.

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Queen Victoria as guardian and embodiment of the Empire

Portrait of Queen Victoria, (detail) Photographer Alexander Bassano © National Portrait Gallery, London

Patriotic Fund, Queensland 1900

Patriotic Fund, Queensland 1900

There had been general criticism of portraits of Queen Victoria as lacking in vitality and being unsmiling but it was also known that Queen Victoria used portraiture to hide her smile and emphasise her serious image as a sovereign.

After Queen Victoria’s husband Prince Albert passed away in 1861, the Queen went into a very long period of seclusion and withdrawal from public life which lasted almost 10 years (1861-1871). It said that she needed to reassert her claim to the monarchy and did so through portraits representing her as a powerful monarch hardened by personal grief and widowhood. Portraits of the 1870s show her as a resolute guardian and embodiment of English power.

This later image of Victoria persisted until her death in 1901.

Further reading: Portraits of the Queen Ira B Nadel, Victorian Poetry, Vol.25, No. 3/4 , Centennial of Queen Victoria’s golden Jubilee (Autumn-Winter, 1987), pp.169-191, West Virginia University Press