Having begun life as a mezzotint engraver, George Dawe was much employed as a painter by Prince Leopold both during his marriage (1816-7) and after; he worked also for the Duke and Duchess of Kent. Like Lawrence he was at Aix-la-Chapelle to paint the crowned heads assembled there for the Congress in 1818. He spent the years 1818-28 working for the Emperor Alexander I in St Petersburg, creating 336 portraits of those responsible for the defeat of Napoleon, housed in a specially-created gallery in the Winter Palace (the equivalent of the Waterloo Chamber). He died soon after his return to England in 1829. The Duke of Kent writing of this painting specified that it was painted in May 1818 at Amorbach, when the sitter was eleven years old. Feodora was the daughter of the Duchess of Kent by her first marriage to Emich Carl, Prince of Leiningen (1763-1814); she was thus the Duke of Kent's step-daughter and Queen Victoria's much-loved half-sister.