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. Queen Victoria asked Princess Feodora, her half-sister from their mother’s first marriage, to have her portrait painted by Winterhalter. Feodora replied ‘I certainly, if you wish it, will have Winterhalter do a sketch of me, though he will not be much pleased to do my old face.’ Feodora was painted in the spring of 1872, and died in September of the same year. The Queen wrote in her Journal, ‘How thankful I am to have got dearest Feodora to sit for this’. Signed and dated: Fr Winterhalter 1872.