According to an inscription on the reverse of the miniature, this work was produced from sittings with the artist taken in 1841 for Mrs Andrew Stevenson, the wife of the American Ambassador in London. Queen Victoria is depicted wearing a white evening dress with the ribbon of the Order of the Garter, a red shawl and a tiara; at her right wrist is a miniature of Prince Albert in a bracelet.

George Freeman, born in Spring Hill, Connecticut, studied miniature painting in Paris and London from 1813. He settled in England exhibiting at the Royal Academy from addresses in Bath and London. He returned to Philadephia in 1837, but the date of the present miniature makes clear that he was in England again in 1841. He died in 1868, aged seventy-eight.