Rosalba Carriera began her career as a painter of miniatures but gradually specialised more and more in the production of pastel portraits. This is probably her final self-portrait, executed shortly before the onset of blindness in 1746; a contemporary engraving by Giuseppe Wagner after this portrait records in its inscription that the pastel was a gift from Carriera to Joseph Smith, Magnæ Britanniæ Cos. (Consul of Great Britain). On that evidence, it would have been executed after Smith's appointment as British Consul in Venice in 1744. Carriera's apparent age (which is well documented through a succession of self portraits) would also date the pastel to around this time.

The theory that the pastel was made as a gift is supported by the lack of affectation in the portrait, which would imply a friendship between artist and recipient. Smith was one of Carriera's major patrons, owning thirty-eight of her works, of which five remain in the Royal Collection. He may also have acted as an occasional intermediary between Carriera and the English travellers who, along with the French and German nobility, formed the bulk of her patronage in her native city of Venice. A respect for the sophisticated taste of the recipient is also suggested by the subdued palette and the achievement of effect through subtle variations in texture, from the smoothly blended fur to the dry crust of the lace, rather than through a more overt showiness.

Catalogue entry adapted from Royal Treasures, A Golden Jubilee Celebration, London 2002 and Portrait of the Artist, London, 2016