Amazing footage of Queen Victoria has been unearthed after being discarded for decades in an archive at a New York museum.
It shows the monarch being greeted by dignitaries on a trip to Ireland in 1900 just one year before she died in what is believed to be the last time she was caught on camera.
In the crisp black and white footage, Victoria, who appears to be wearing sunglasses, smiles as she is handed a huge basket of flowers by two girls, who curtsy as they approach her.
She is also seen holding an umbrella which she seems to be using to shade herself from the sun.
The film was discovered by British Film Institute curator Bryony Dixon at the New York Museum of Modern Art, who said she was stunned when she came across it.
Footage has been unearthed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York of Queen Victoria visiting Ireland in 1900, pictured
The monarch is seen sitting in a carriage, wearing what appear to be sunglasses and smiling, in contrast to her usual serious appearance
Ms Dixon said: ‘I nearly fell off my chair because I’d never seen Victoria in close-up before.
‘It is completely unique because you can see the Queen’s face for the first time properly since 1900, since this was shown.. …you can see her expressions, you can see her in movement, rather than just as a stiff portrait or a still photograph.’
She added it the footage ‘humanises’ the monarch because it shows her smiling instead of the stoic expression she often displayed in official portraits throughout her 63-year reign.
Ms Dixon said: ‘It’s very rare to see her smiling. She doesn’t in any of her portraits, so it humanises her, I think, for the first time.’
She added: ‘Queen Victoria was always very up to date with technology and she was interested in art.
‘She was interested in photography in particular so here, instead of a posed photo or painting, we see her in movement.’
The film is believed to be the last time she was caught on camera before her death a year later
The smiling footage comes as a new exhibition on the Isle of Wight has also highlighted the ‘stiff and proper’ monarch’s softer side.
English Heritage are highlighting the nude sculptures and a painting of bathing maidens which Victoria and Prince Albert gave each other in a display at Osborne House, the couple’s palatial holiday home on the Isle of Wight, to celebrate the 200th anniversary of their births.
The researchers say it proves the pair shared a ‘passionate’ private life despite their prim public personas.
Michael Hunter, curator at Osborne, said: ‘Queen Victoria may be remembered as the mourning widow in black, but these gifts show a different side to her personality.
‘She was open to nudity and the sensuous, more open than Albert who perhaps surprisingly was the more prudish of the pair.’
Queen Victoria paraded through Dublin with a royal entourage, pictured. She was a controversial figure in the country and was felt to have done little to have helped the Irish during the 1840s famine
Huge crowds of people turned out to see the monarch on her visit to Dublin in 1900, pictured left and right. It was her first visit since 1861
For example, Victoria bought artist Franz Xaver Winterhalter’s Florinda, a painting of semi-nude women preparing to bathe, for one of Albert’s birthdays, and it was her wish that it should hang directly opposite their writing desks at Osborne, where it remains today.
And when Albert commissioned a statue of himself as a Greek warrior for Queen Victoria’s birthday in 1844, she wrote in her journal that it was ‘very beautiful’.
Victoria was born in 1819 to Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, the fourth son of King George III.
Both the Duke and the King died in 1820, and Victoria was raised under close supervision by her mother, Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld.
She inherited the throne at the age of 18, after her father’s three elder brothers had all died, leaving no surviving legitimate children.
Victoria retreated from public appearances following the death of husband Prince Albert, pictured together in 1861, and ‘lived in mourning’
Victoria married her first cousin Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha in 1840 and they had nine children.
They married their offspring into royal and noble families across the continent, earning Victoria the nickname ‘the grandmother of Europe’.
But after Albert’s death in 1861, she retreated from public appearances and became known for wearing black and living in mourning.
However she remained popular throughout her reign and had Golden and Diamond Jubilees that saw huge public celebrations.
She was the longest-serving monarch in the UK at 63 years and seven months until Queen Elizabeth II broke the record in September 2015.
Queen Victoria died in January 1901 and was succeeded by her eldest son, Edward VII.
The life and times of Queen Victoria
A new exhibition called Victoria: Woman and Crown and Victoria: A Royal Childhood began on Friday last week to coincide with the 200th anniversary of her birth
Victoria was born at Kensington Palace, London on May 24, 1819 and was the only daughter of Edward Duke of Kent.
On the death of William IV she became queen at the tender age of 18, and was known as a prolific diarist, with a talent for drawing.
Victoria would later described her childhood as ‘melancholy’, due to her being raised in isolation and rarely meeting other people.
The series of strict rules governing her behaviour were known as the Kensington System.
She was kept under constant surveillance and isolated from the company of other children at the instruction of her mother the Duchess of Kent and her father’s former equerry John Conroy.
Her name was actually Alexandrina Victoria and her childhood nickname was Drina, but she ruled as Victoria, which she is said to have preferred.
The young queen, who was unmarried at the time, lived with her mother, who had an apartment in Buckingham Palace.
But it wasn’t long before Victoria became smitten with her potential suitor Prince Albert, who visited Windsor in October 1839.
She married Prince Albert in 1840 and had nine children between 1840 and 1857.
But Victoria was not a doting mother and thought it was her duty to be ‘severe’ and she hated being pregnant
As well as being her beloved partner, Albert would play a key role as an adviser.
But Prince Albert died in 1861 at the young age of 42, that deeply affected Victoria, who would then wear black for the rest of her reign.
When she died in 1901 at the age of 81 after a period of ill health, no proper plans were in place for her funeral.
The complex arrangements – including transporting Victoria’s body across the Solent from the Isle of Wight and a military procession through London – had to be organised from scratch in 10 days.