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. The Queen is depicted in evening dress. She wears the ribbon and star of the Garter, and the Garter round her left arm. Her headdress has imitation leaves of corn wound into it. In her Journal the Queen wrote about ‘a new head he [Winterhalter] is to paint of me, with a peculiar light effect’. This effect seems to owe something to Reynolds's portrait of Nelly O'Brien in the Wallace Collection. Signed and dated: 'F Winterhalter. / 1845.' Inscribed on the back with the names of the artist and sitter and the date, 1845.