Queen Victoria is portrayed in this cabinet card albumen print seated in three-quarter view, her gaze directed firmly to the left. The studio imprint on the mount reads "Upson & Simson, 456 Main Street, Buffalo, N.Y.," a firm documented in the Buffalo city directory for 1870, placing this portrait squarely in that period. The image almost certainly reproduces or rephotographs a well-circulated original portrait of the Queen, a common commercial practice of the era by which American studios supplied the public with likenesses of notable figures.

After Prince Albert died on 14 December 1861, Queen Victoria wore mourning dress for more than forty years until her own death in 1901. That signature appearance is fully present here: a voluminous black silk gown with bead-trimmed horizontal bands across the bodice and skirt, wide sleeves gathered at the wrist with white lace cuffs, and the distinctive white widow's cap fitted close to the head. The white cap worn by Queen Victoria has come to be regarded as a symbol of her widowhood, representing one of the few contrasts in colour to the deepest mourning she adopted after 1861. She is seated in an elaborately carved and upholstered chair, her gloved hands resting in her lap and a small pendant visible at her neckline, with a draped side table partially visible at left.

The power of the image of the Queen in black was one which she actively cultivated, as a public statement that the royal wife had become a royal widow, an identity intrinsically linked with Prince Albert's memory. Victoria's behavior was so influential that it impacted entire nations, causing a shift in funeral customs and mourning clothes. Cabinet cards bearing her likeness circulated widely on both sides of the Atlantic, making such portraits among the most recognizable commercial photographs of the nineteenth century.

Inscribed in pencil on the reverse: "Queen Victoria." Upson & Simson are documented at 456 Main Street, Buffalo, New York, in 1870.