This miniature is coloured over a photograph. The card is the artist's trade card and indicates it was produced in the Barnards' studio. Philip Augustus Barnard (exhibited RA 1840 – 84) and his wife Hebe, née Saunders (exhibited RA 1852 – 7), worked as miniaturists from premises at 140 Regent Street, London, in 1856, and latterly from 131 Regent Street, where their son, Walter Barnard Saunders (1851 – 1930), also practised as a miniaturist. The photograph on which it is based shows Queen Victoria c.1870, dressed in black with the ribbon and star of the Order of the Garter and the badge of Victoria and Albert at her right shoulder.

This object was displayed at the Charles Dickens Reception at Buckingham Palace, 2012.