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.

Princess Helena (1846-1923), nicknamed Lenchen, was the fifth child and third daughter of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. 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.

Queen Victoria was at the Rosenau (the palace in Saxe-Coburg where Prince Albert was born, which is now in Bavaria in Germany) with Princess Louise and Princess Helena when Winterhalter arrived on August 1865. Princess Helena wears a white evening dress and the badge of the Order of Victoria and Albert. Queen Victoria had written to her eldest daughter, the Crown Princess Victoria, that Winterhalter was coming to paint the two Princesses to go with the portraits of the Crown Princess and Princess Alice, Queen Victoria's second daughter. 'Lenchen is 3 years older than you were & Louise the same age as Alice was – when hers was painted – so they cld. Really not wait longer'.

Signed and dated: Fr Winterhalter. / 1865. Inscribed on the back with the names of the artist and sitter and as painted at the Rosenau in August 1865.