A white Parian ware bust of Queen Victoria with her head turned to her right, wearing a wreath of flowers, laurel and oak leaves, and drapery; on a circular socle with a square plinth.

This bust was manufactured by Minton & Co. in 1862, in the increasingly popular medium of Parian-ware, also known as statuary porcelain. By this time, pieces produced in Parian were sought after and they appeared at key exhibitions in the mid nineteenth-century. They were also disseminated through the Art Unions, who commissioned reproductions of famous works as prizes for their members.

Minton produced at least two busts and four figures of the queen during the 1840s and 1850s, while their competitors Copeland produced at least six busts. Victoria was taken by the innovative medium, shown by the fact that she purchased a Parian reproduction of John Gibson's Narcissus (1846) in 1852, having seen it on display at the Great Exhibition the previous year. Minton's Victoria bust was also exhibited at the 1862 International Exhibition as a pair with a bust of Albert.

Both this piece and the accompanying bust of Albert are reduced scale versions of works by the Turin-born sculptor Baron Carlo Marochetti from the period 1848-55. The commission to sculpt Albert was Marochetti's first royal commission on British soil, and Queen Victoria was so pleased with the likeness that she subsequently sat for her own bust in 1854. Her journal notes that she sat for additional days so that Marochetti could 'correct' the portrait, suggesting a tightly controlled partnership between artist and patron.