An early work by Joseph Lee of exceptionally high quality, this miniature of Princess Charlotte is signed lower left in grey paint: J. Lee / 1814 and signed and dated on the counter-enamel in black paint: Jos: Lee Pinxt. / Londini / 1814. It is derived from Charlotte Jones's miniature of 1813 in the Belgian Royal Collection, Brussels. Versions by Jones are at Anglesey Abbey and (1816) in the Royal Collection (421470). The image was also reproduced as an engraving by John Samuel Agar with Westminster Abbey in the background, but Lee's copy excludes both the Abbey and the simplified landscape background of Jones's version and shows Princess Charlotte wearing a white pearl-trimmed dress and an ermine-lined blue robe, with a suite of emerald and pearl jewellery including a shoulder clip, brooch, necklace and hair comb, and a gold bracelet. Although the enamel was not recorded in the Royal Collection until at least 1858, it may have been commissioned by the sitter. Lee styled himself as 'enamel painter' to Princess Charlotte of Wales and exhibited enamels of her at the Royal Academy in 1815, 1818 and 1823, as well as an enamel of her consort, Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, 'intended for a brooch' in 1823.

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. As well as enjoying the patronage of Princess Charlotte of Wales, he also worked as 'enamel painter' to Augustus, Duke of Sussex, uncle to Queen Victoria. 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