Queen Victoria must have arranged for Ross to paint her niece in response to the dearth of suitable miniature painters nearer home, for Princess Feodora, the queen's half-sister, wrote to her on 15 January 1840: 'You want to have a portrait of Eliza but unfortunately for miniature there is no good portrait painter in Stuttgardt. I think you will find her pretty when you see her, she is a handsome girl, unfortunately that tooth disfigures her a little when she speaks or laughs' (RA VIC/Y 35/57). The result is a charming and successful portrait that shows her for the 'very handsome' girl she was 'with magnificent hazel eyes, fine features & a tall, slender figure' (RA QVJ: 14 August 1840). Years later, following Princess Elise's premature death from tuberculosis, Queen Victoria sent her grieving mother a bracelet containing a copy by Guglielmo Faija of this miniature by Ross. Princess Feodora responded: 'I think the miniature very good, and the setting so beautiful, the idea so beautiful … Only with tears I can thank you!' (RA VIC/Y 39/135).

Elise, Princess of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, eldest daughter of Ernest, Prince of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, and of Princess Feodora of Leiningen, half-sister of Queen Victoria. She died in Venice on 27 February 1851.