Queen Victoria had first acquired a miniature of Queen Louise by Ross in 1839, but that miniature, last recorded in the Print Room, Windsor Castle, in 1851, is no longer in the Royal Collection. It must have been the miniature for which Queen Louise 'had the happiness to sit yesterday almost the whole day for good Mr. Ross who arrived here on Saturday last, in order to finish my portrait' (RA VIC/Y 7/5, 8 October 1839). The present miniature was sent to Queen Victoria in the immediate aftermath of Queen Louise's death, Ross instructing his sister Maria, from Paris on 16 October 1850: 'If the Miniature of the Queen of the Belgians in the blue dress is not already sent let it be forwarded to Buckingham Palace forthwith' (RA VIC/ADDX5). These circumstances suggest it was a copy that Ross had retained in his studio after a prototype, now lost, perhaps painted for the King of the Belgians. A third type, falling between the portraits of 1839 and 1846, and considered the most successful miniature that Ross had painted of Queen Louise, was the subject of correspondence between the grieving King of the Belgians and Queen Victoria soon after the Queen's death, Leopold I asking: 'Who has the miniature by Ross with red ribbands in her hair?' (RA VIC/Y 76/16). Queen Victoria replied: 'The Picture by Ross – the 1st with black Lace the Queen [Marie-Amélie] has; I have 2 small Copies of it; – Mama has one & Ross has himself 2; the one I got for Clém [Clémentine, Duchess Augustus of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha], & the other, the largest of the 2, the same size as the original, he has still got. Tell me if you wish me to do anything about it for you' (RA VIC/ADDY/95/40). The miniature concerned showed the Queen three-quarter-length in the gardens at Laeken, dressed in white with a black lace shawl and with red ribbons and black lace in her hair. It was formerly in the Belgian Royal Collection and was included in the sale of the estate of HRH Princess Lilian of Belgium, Sotheby's, Amsterdam, 22 and 23 September 2003 (lot 3).

Ross worked extensively for the Belgian Royal Family, and Queen Louise's positive reports of his early work for them in 1839 ('certainly in his genre the best painter that I know of now … an excellent man, most conscientious in all he does') (RA VIC/Y 7/8) can only have increased Queen Victoria's confidence in his skills and her desire to retain his services. It was on the recommendation of Queen Louise that Ross travelled to Paris in 1841 to paint the family of her father, Louis-Philippe, King of the French; and the correspondence between Queen Louise and her niece, which dates from their first meeting in Ramsgate in 1835 and continued until the time of her death in 1850, constitutes one of the most important resources documenting Ross's patronage by the royal families of Europe and their reactions to the artist and his work.

A card kept with the miniature is inscribed in ink: Louise d'Orleans Queen of the Belgians b. April 3 1812. & died oct. 11. 1850. painted by Sir Wm. Ross. 1846