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.

Said to have been given by the sitter to Queen Victoria on her birthday, 24th May 1850, but in her Journal the Queen records a visit to Winterhalter on 21st June when he had "just finished a picture of Aunt Gloucester for me, which is her kind gift. It is her very image and such a pleasing likeness". It was hung in the Queen's Dressing Room in Buckingham Palace.

Princess Mary, daughter of George III, married William Frederick, Duke of Gloucester in 1816 but had no children. When she died in 1857, Queen Victoria wrote: 'Her age, and her being a link with bygone times and generations … rendered her more and more dear and precious to us all, and we all looked upon her as a sort of grandmother'.

Signed and dated: F Winterhalter / 1850.