After a three-quarter-length oil portrait by Johann Georg Ziesenis (1716 – 76) in the Royal Collection (RCIN 405906). Charles II, Duke of Brunswick, son of Charles I, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, and Charlotte, daughter of Frederick William I, King of Prussia, married, in 1764, Augusta, Princess Royal, eldest daughter of Frederick, Prince of Wales, and sister of George III, and succeeded as Duke of Brunswick in 1780. As a general in the Prussian army, he commanded the Allied armies of Austria and Prussia against the Napoleonic forces, but died of his wounds following the Battle of Jena in 1806. His daughter, Caroline, married George, Prince of Wales, and became Queen Caroline.

Joseph Lee (1780-1859) was self-taught as an an enamellist at a late age, but made a successful career as an enamel painter, exhibiting intermittently at the RA and the SBA between 1809 and 1853 from addresses in London. He styled himself as 'enamel painter' to Princess Charlotte of Wales and later worked as 'enamel painter' to Augustus, Duke of Sussex. It may have been the gift of a small enamel of the Duke of Sussex to Queen Victoria that first made her familiar with Lee's work. She employed his services for producing enamel copies based on oil paintings between 1844 and 1850. He retired from miniature painting in his final years and died, aged seventy-nine, in Gravesend, Kent, on 26 December 1859.