This is a copy by Müller, after an enigmatic three-quarter-length portrait of Maria Feodorovna by Heinrich von Angeli in the Hermitage, dated 1874 (no 6975). An inscription on the reverse records that it was painted in Russia, although it appears that the artist travelled with his own prepared canvases from George Rowney & Co. Although a skilfully executed and accurate copy, the portrait lacks the softness and fluidity of the original. It is painted in a uniformly smooth and quite dense painting technique, over a light grey imprimatura layer (toned modelling layer). In the original portrait, von Angeli deliberately allows a lower, warm, transparent brown imprimatura layer to show through the looser, more fluid brushstrokes, giving greater depth and immediacy to the composition. Müller compensates for the lack of depth in the roses with coloured highlights.

Contemporary writers described her as compelling, and she was said to love clothes and jewels, especially pearls. On first meeting the Princess in 1862, Queen Victoria, for whom this portrait was painted, described the sitter as ‘quite different [to Princess Alexandra, the sitter's sister], with fine brown eyes’.

The daughter of Christian IX, King of Denmark, in 1866 she married the future Tsar Alexander III. After the Revolution in 1917 she escaped in a British cruiser from the Crimea and spent the rest of her life in Denmark.

The frame is by William Brooks & Son, London.

Text adapted from Russia: Art, Royalty & the Romanovs, London, 2018