A copy by Simpson after the miniature of Princess Charlotte of Belgium painted by Sir William Ross in the year of her marriage to the Archduke Maximilian of Austria for the sitter's father, Leopold I, King of the Belgians.

John Simpson (1811-after 1871) was trained as a porcelain painter at the Derby porcelain factory before moving to London in 1845. He soon established a practice as a miniature painter specialising in works on enamel, and fulfilled the first of many commissions for Queen Victoria in that year. He is last recorded describing himself at the end of his career as a 'photographic artist' (1871 census return); the date of his death is not known.

Princess Charlotte of Belgium, later Empress Carlotta of Mexico, only daughter of Leopold I, King of the Belgians, and Princess Louise of Orléans, married, in 1857, Maximilian, Archduke of Austria, second son of Archduke Franz Karl of Austria, later Maximilian I, Emperor of Mexico (1864 – 7). Depressed by her failure to provide an heir and by the increasing fragility of the throne of Mexico after Napoleon III withdrew his military support, the Empress Carlotta sailed to Europe in 1866 to galvanise support for her husband's crumbling regime. Her failure drove her to insanity and she lived out the rest of her life in seclusion, eventually dying at the Château de Bouchout in Belgium in 1927.

Signed, dated and inscribed on the counter-enamel in black paint: Princess Charlotte / of Belgium. / after Sir Wm Ross 1857. By J. Simpson / 1858.