Joseph Lee's enamel is based on the full-length portrait by Franz Xaver Winterhalter at Versailles, signed and dated 1842 (MV 5111; repr. Constans 1995, II, no. 5358). However, Lee is likely to have worked on one of the numerous replicas by François Meuret after this source (such as 421495 which Queen Victoria received as a gift from Queen Marie-Amélie in January 1844). Queen Marie-Amélie is depicted in a blue day dress with blue bow at her breast, a white lace fichu, matching bonnet of lace and blue and yellow feathers, and a pearl necklace.

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.