This portrait of Queen Victoria is possibly the first tapestry woven at the Royal Windsor Tapestry Company. It is taken from a painting by the Austrian artist Baron Heinrich von Angeli (1840-1925) completed at Windsor Castle in 1875. This is a very suitable subject for the Royal Windsor Tapestry Company which was closely connected with the Royal family. Queen Victoria was Patron and her children were appointed Presidents and Vice Presidents. She made several visits there and recorded her favourable impressions in her diaries. In 1880 she consented to the manufactory being termed 'Royal'. The tapestry cartoon was drawn in 1876 by Phoebus Levin, a German painter working in London between 1855 and 1878. The tapestry bears the names of Michel Brignolas, who became the first Manager, and of Henri C. M. Henry, Art Director of Gillows, the Oxford Street decorators who founded the Royal Windsor Tapestry Company. The Royal Windsor Tapestry company emulated the work of contemporary French establishments. It adopted the 'basse lisse' (low warp) technique favoured at the fashionable Beauvais factories. The tapestry was exhibited at the Paris International Exhibition of 1878. Here it was purchased by Sir Albert Sasoon for his home at 25 Kensington Gore, London.