I built this website to help an Australian friend who is trying to obtain information about a painting she inherited, which she would like to valuate and sell. It is a portrait of Queen Victoria painted in color on a ceramic plaque about 1 cm thick, 24.35 cm wide and 32 cm high. The ceramic plaque and the portrait are in perfect condition. Curiously, there is no painter's signature anywhere on the ceramic slab. I have no firm explanation for this absence of a signature.

The owner brought the fragile plaque to my office recently, so that I could inspect and scan it. My non-professional scanner could not copy the entire portrait (slightly larger than an A4 sheet of paper) in one pass. So I had to make two scans and join the images. That is why you see a horizontal separation in this reproduction at the level of the queen's left hand.

Research through the Internet has revealed that the image on the ceramic plaque would appear to be a copy of a portrait of the young queen painted in about 1837 by Edmund Parris. Today, the original painting by Parris belongs to the Royal Collection. I am grateful to specialists at the Royal Collection for sending me a monochrome photocopy of the original (reproduced below) as well as references of several copies.

Other copies of the Parris painting of the young queen exist at the National Portrait Gallery. Details of these copies can be obtained directly through the web.

Apart from my friend's plaque, no other copies of the Parris painting appear to have been executed on a ceramic support.