Yesterday evening I found a portrait of Queen Victoria in the news:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1220740/Victoria-beauty-queen-The-picture-gave-Albert.html

This made me wonder what she actually looked like, which gave me
another idea. What is the kind of difference between portrait painters
and photographers in the Victorian age? Would the portrait painters be
much more likely to flatter the Queen, romanticise her, make her look
extremely regal, or what? I thought it would be interesting to compare
portraits of the period with photographs, so I set to browsing the
Royal Collection:

http://www.royalcollection.org.uk/eGallery/

The Royal Collection has a lot of portraits of her. The ones by Franz
Xaver Winterhalter, who also did the portrait covered in the Daily
Mail, were probably the best. These two, for example, closely match in
terms of features:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Young_Queen_Victoria.jpg
http://bit.ly/bCJBuu (Royal Collection, Obj. 404388)

And then compare these to the following photographs:

http://www.patourism.co.za/images/Queen_Victoria__Albert_1854.JPG
http://bit.ly/aSG8lH (LIFE Magazine, 50695704.jpg)
http://bit.ly/9rNPrV (Slate, 03_Queen-Victoria-and-Princ.jpg)

What I found most interesting about almost all of the portraits of
Queen Victoria is that, especially in her younger years, she's
portrayed as being extremely dainty and fragile looking, as though you
could blow her over with a butterfly's wings. This is in complete
contrast to the great power that she had as Queen of the British
Empire, on which the sun never set. Consider especially the portrait
of her visiting the tomb of Napoleon:

http://bit.ly/a6Mxhp (Royal Collection, Obj. 402019)

She was more powerful than he, yet if it wasn't for her position in
the good composition of the painting, it would be difficult to
distinguish her based on her attire from the various other ladies
around her, who I assume are attendants though may be other royals.
Even the regal portraits of her, which show her on the throne with
sceptres and full regalia, make her look as though she's undaunting.

One thing I notice too is that in portraits and photos with Prince
Albert, she's always looking very wistful at him, and he seems the
more commanding, for example in Queen_Victoria__Albert_1854.JPG above.
There is one photo of him looking at her and her looking away as if to
ignore him, which is a very peculiar photo, and I wonder if that had
some kind of social or political significance behind it.