View of the Royal and Imperial Visit to the Crystal Palace, Sydenham, London,

1855

From May to October 1851, more than six million visitors saw the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations at the Crystal Palace, which was built specifically for the occasion in London’s Hyde Park. Following the exhibition, the iron-and-glass components of the building were dismantled and reassembled on a hilltop in Sydenham, south of London. There the Crystal Palace served as an exhibition hall, a performance space, and a venue for major public expositions until its destruction by fire in 1936. This diminutive plate is a widowed half of a stereograph pair. Queen Victoria of England, her husband Prince Albert, and their guests, the French Emperor Napoleon III and Princess Eugénie, are seated foremost on the stage, facing their public and unwittingly posing for an early example of celebrity press photography.