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 is depicted in evening dress with a wreath of roses in her hair and wearing the ribbon and star of the Garter and the Garter round her left arm. With her right hand she draws back the curtain to reveal a vase of flowers on the terrace. This painting was apparently begun as a copy of the Queen’s portrait in Garter robes completed in 1843. The Queen noted in her Journal in January 1845 that ‘the full length copies of the pictures in the Robes…have been altered to evening dress & uniform’.