A pencil drawing showing a portrait of Duke Ernest II, of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. He is shown bust-length, facing left in profile. An older man, possibly Ernest I, is shown to the left. He is shown from behind, seated in a chair.
Inscribed lower right: Raden Saleh 8 September 1845 

Raden Saleh was born in Java, then a Dutch colony, and was the nephew of the Regent of Semarang. He took drawing lessons with a Belgian artist, Antoine Payen, in his home country before travelling to Europe in 1829 having won a scholarship from the Dutch government. He spent ten years in the Netherlands studying painting and beginning his career, before travelling to Germany. In Dresden at the beginning of the 1840s he made the acquaintance of Ernest, Prince of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. The two men became lifelong friends and Saleh spent almost a year living with the Duke and his wife in Coburg in 1844. Ernest was the brother of Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria. Albert and Victoria visited Germany for the first time together in August 1845, and Saleh returned from Paris, where he had travelled at the beginning of the year, so as to be presented to the British Queen. He - or Ernest - presumably sent this portrait drawing to her as a gift shortly after her visit. Victoria met Saleh again at Coburg in 1876; in the intervening period, Saleh spent further periods of time in Paris, Germany and Switzerland before returning to Java in 1851, where he served as the conservator of the Dutch colonial administration's art collection in Batavia and forged a successful career as a portrait and landscape painter.