The Penny Black Stamp Store: William Wyon and the Portrait of Queen Victoria

Friday 24 June 2011

William Wyon and the Portrait of Queen Victoria

Princess Victoria was born May 24 1819, she became Queen in 1837 aged 18, and died in Jan 22, 1901 aged 81, she reigned for 63 years. She was twenty when the penny black was issued on 6th May 1840. Over her 61 year reign, she never ages, all the stamps are based on William Wyon's head.

William Wyon (1795-1851) became chief engraver at the Royal Mint in 1828, in 1834 he modelled the head of Princess Victoria when she was 15, and this was subsequently used for the City Medal struck in 1837 to celibrate her first visit to the City of London after her accession to the throne when she was 18. This was the model for the head on the line-engraved stamps of 1840-79, the embossed stamps of 1847-54 and the postal stationary 1841-1901. The primary die used for the embossed issue was engraved by William Wyon, and the 1s and 10d stamps have the initials ww along with the die number at the base of the neck. He was elected to the Royal Academy in 1838.

Wyon medal in silver, note: W. Wyon. R.A. detail (R.A.=Royal Academy)

His design also influenced the surface-printed stamps first printed in 1855. The name of William Wyon is also well known amongst coin and medal collectors because of his prodigious output and artistic skill. In all portraits of Queen Victoria on British stamps the hair goes above the ear and over the crown as on the Wyon medal. Queen Victoria also faces to the left on all the stamps.

Wyon city medal 1837 (Bronze)

Source: http://www.imagesoftheworld.org/stamps/wyon.htm

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A Brief History

Before 1st May 1840, posting a letter was a very complicated and expensive affair. It could cost the equivalent of a days wage, and it was charged by how many sheets of paper were used and how far it had to travel. Normally the recipient had to pay the cost.

Sir Roland Hill was responsible for reforming the British postal system, and as part of this a competition was held for the public to design the world’s first adhesive postage stamp. However none of the entries were thought suitable, so instead they used the profile sketch of a then 15 year old Queen Victoria. This image was used on stamps until the end of her reign. Because the Penny Black was the first postage stamp in the world, it did not show a country of origin, and to this day British stamps are the only stamps in the world that do not state what country they are from.

However, the Penny Black only remained in circulation for a year, as it was soon found that it was possible to remove the ink of the red cancellation mark and re-use the stamp, so the Treasury switched to the Penny Red and black cancellation ink.