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 Adelaide, the wife of Queen Victoria's uncle King William IV, sat for this portrait, wearing a black lace cap and holding a letter in her hand, two months before her death in 1849. Shortly afterwards, Queen Victoria wrote to the King of the Belgians that Winterhalter had 'made such a beautiful and striking picture of the poor dear Queen'.

Adelaide had married William in 1818, when she was in 25 and William was 52; the marriage proved a happy one despite the age difference and the fact that the couple had never met before Adelaide accepted his proposal. She had tried, without much success, to improve the relationship between her husband and the Duchess of Kent, Queen Victoria's mother. After William's death in 1837, Adelaide's health deteriorated and she became an invalid, travelling to the Mediterranean in search of a warmer climate. At her request she was buried simply, carried to the grave by sailors, at Windsor.