Joseph Lee's enamel is derived an oil portrait by Thomas Phillips (1770-1845) dating from 1828 (exhibited Royal Academy 1828, no. 71; current location unknown) showing the Duke of Sussex full-length in the robes he wore for the Coronation of George IV. A posthumous rectangular enamel copy by Joseph Lee formed the basis for H. Robinson's stipple engraving published by Fisher, Son & Co. in 1831. This may have been the full-length version by Lee given to Victoria Mary, Princess of Wales, later Queen Mary, by Lord and Lady Mount Stephen in 1905 but no longer in the Royal Collection. The present miniature was probably given to Queen Victoria by Cecilia, Duchess of Inverness, in memory of her late husband and was first listed in the Royal Library in 1855. It was later installed in a decorative hang of enamel miniatures in the Audience Room, Windsor Castle.

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 the present 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