Winterhalter was born in the Black Forest where he was encouraged to draw at school. In 1818 he went to Freiburg to study under Karl Ludwig Schüler and then moved to Munich in 1823, where he attended the Academy and studied under Josef Stieler, a fashionable portrait painter. Winterhalter was first brought to the attention of Queen Victoria by the Queen of the Belgians and subsequently painted numerous portraits at the English court from 1842 till his death. Prince Arthur (1850–1942) was the third son and seventh of the nine children of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. He had a career in the army and became Governor-General of Canada. Here the three-year-old Prince is depicted in uniform, with a musket. The uniform is stated to be that of a Lieutenant in the 1st Foot Guards, but the shoulder-strap plate and the arrangement of the buttons on the cuffs are those of the 3rd, or Scots Fusilier, Guards. The uniform was passed on to Prince Arthur’s son, ‘Little Arthur’, who appeared in it at tea on 6 March 1885. The uniform was ‘too tight for him, though the former wore it when he was 3’, according to Queen Victoria’s notes in her Journal. Inscribed on the back with the names of the artist and sitter and the date, July 1853.