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 Alfred (1844–1900) is in Highland dress, sitting with his sister, Princess Helena, and holding out of her reach the two feathers from his Glengarry bonnet. Queen Victoria described the painting in her Journal as ‘a beautiful picture of Affie and Lenchen by Winterhalter, wonderfully like & a charming a picture in itself, so prettily grouped’. Prince Alfred was the second son of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. He was an extrovert with an enquiring mind and enjoyed learning. He taught himself the violin when he was a child and later his niece, Princess Alice of Albany, remembered ‘the erratic movements of his bow over the strings, which he fingered with exuberant originality but with little regard for the score’. He later helped establish the Royal College of Music. He enjoyed a career in the navy and was made Admiral of the Fleet in 1893.

Princess Helena (1846-1923), nicknamed Lenchen, was the fifth child and third daughter. She was lively, outspoken and something of a tomboy. In 1866 she married Prince Christian of Schleswig Holstein and in 1916 they celebrated their Golden Wedding anniversary; she was the only child of Queen Victoria to do so.

Signed and dated: F Winterhalter. / 1849. Inscribed on the back with the names of the artist and sitters and the date, 1849.