In 1837, at the age of eighteen, Queen Victoria took the throne after the death of her uncle William IV. Her long reign until her death 1901 witnessed an evolution in English politics and the expansion of the British Empire. Mackennal’s statuette of Queen Victoria was intended to take advantage of the intense patriotism surrounding the celebration of the Monarch’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897. Small in size, yet monumental in feeling, the work is an idealised image of the youthful queen at the time of her ascension to the throne.