Chalon head

The Chalon Head is the name of a number of postage stamp series whose illustration was inspired by a portrait of Queen Victoria by Alfred Edward Chalon (1780–1860).

These stamps, printed in New York City for the Canadian colonies, and by Perkins, Bacon and Company in London, were issued in many British colonies from the 1850s until 1912 in Queensland. In chronological order, they were released in the Province of Canada in 1851, Nova Scotia in 1853, Tasmania and New Zealand in 1855, The Bahamas and Natal in 1859, Grenada, New Brunswick and Queensland in 1860, and in 1870 in Prince Edward Island.

Because these are some of the world's first stamps or the very first stamps to bear these colonies' names, the Chalon series are objects of many studies and collections.

The head came from a painting by Alfred Edward Chalon, drawn for the first public appearance of Victoria as Queen on the occasion of her speech at the House of Lords where she prorogued the Parliament of the United Kingdom in July 1837. Chalon's work was intended as a gift from Victoria to her mother.

In the portrait she is wearing the George IV State Diadem, created in 1820, and the State Robes, a dress and a long royal mantle. Her body is half-turned to the right side, on top of a flight of stairs. While her head is turned to the right, her left hand holds the plinth of a column on which there is a sculpted lion.

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