French calf leather album by Maquet, with silver gilt clasps and green watered silk board lining, each leaf having four embossed paper windows, containing 100 albumen cartes-de-visite (RCINs 2915115-2915213).

From the 1840s Queen Victoria began to acquire photographic portraits of her family, friends and acquaintances. The introduction of the carte-de-visite in the 1850s, however, changed the way in which photographs were collected. This new format – a photograph measuring approximately 9 x 6 cm pasted onto card, patented on 27 November 1854 by André Disdéri (1819–89) – could be produced in large numbers for a relatively cheap price. Individuals began to distribute their portraits within their social circle, and by 1860 thousands of cartes were being exchanged, collected and pasted into photograph albums.

The royal family began by commissioning cartes-de-visite privately from photographers such as William Bambridge and Frances Sally Day, the first female photographer to work for the Queen. Commercial photographers, however, soon realised that there was a lucrative market for carte-de-visite portraits of well-known public figures. When J.J.E. Mayall released his portraits taken in May 1860 of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, with their permission, public demand was overwhelming. Whereas all previous photographic portraits of the Queen had been for private use within the royal circle, now anybody could own an image of the Queen.

The Queen and her family thus became a valuable commodity within the photographic market, as well as continuing to acquire photographs as eagerly as everyone else. Indeed, the Queen’s enthusiasm for collecting was remarked upon by the Hon. Eleanor Stanley, one of her ladies-in-waiting, who wrote on 24 November 1860: ‘I have been writing to all the fine ladies in London, for theirs or their husband’s photographs, for the Queen; … I believe Miss Skerrett is right when she says “she [the Queen] could be bought, and sold for a Photograph!”’.