BANKSY
Queen Victoria, 2002
Oil on canvas in original artist’s frame
Canvas: 91.5 x 91.5 cm (36×36 inches)
Overall: 113.5 x 112 cm (44 3/4 x 44 inches)
Stencil signature, lower right
Provenance
Lazarides Gallery, London
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner
Exhibited
London, Shoreditch Dragon Bar, Santa’s Ghetto, 2002
Auction History
Sotheby’s London: 17 October 2008
Estimated: GBP 250,000 – 350,000
Price realized: GBP 277,250 / USD 479,965
“Show your friends and colleagues your admiration for Britain’s greatest ever living monarch with this deluxe lesbian watersports fetish tableaux.”

The strength of this artwork lies in the collision of opposites: royalty and erotica, authority and subversion, public reverence and private rebellion. By placing a symbol of empire in a sexualized, taboo-breaking pose, Banksy not only ridicules imperial pretension but also opens a space for alternate histories: ones where desire and identity are freed from the long shadow of the Crown.