Long Live the Queen

Today marks the centennial of Queen Victoria's death in 1901.

During Queen Victoria's impressive sixty-four-year reign over Great Britain, she and her husband Prince Albert created one of the world's greatest collections of fine art, the Victoria and Albert Museum.

The V&A museum complex was funded by the proceeds from the Great Exhibition of 1851 (also known as the Crystal Palace Exhibition). Prince Albert spearheaded this important arts and industrial exhibition, which historians say ushered in the Victorian era.

This 1898 photograph of Queen Victoria was taken by an unidentified photographer about three years before her death. At that time, it was said that the sun never set on the expansive British Empire, which encompassed approximately one-quarter of the world.

Pictured: Unknown artist, Portrait of Queen Victoria, 1898, 10 1/4 x 6 1/8 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Harriet Lane Johnson.