Queen Victoria (1819–1901), in Robes of State

David Wilkie's portrait of Queen Victoria in Robes of State of 1840 was among his last major royal commissions, painted the year before his death on the journey home from the Near East. The state portrait presents the twenty-one-year-old queen in the formal regalia of sovereignty, combining the official function of royal representation with Wilkie's characteristic attention to psychological character. The painting documents Victoria in the early years of her reign before the domestic mythology of the Victorian family had fully consolidated, presenting a monarch in the formal mode of traditional state portraiture.

Wilkie renders the young queen with dignified formality and careful attention to the coronation robes, crown, and regalia. The warm palette and the broad brushwork of his late style create a commanding but approachable image of the young monarch.