Winterhalter was born in the Black Forest where he was encouraged to draw at school. In 1818 he went to Freiburg to study under Karl Ludwig Schüler and then moved to Munich in 1823, where he attended the Academy and studied under Josef Stieler, a fashionable portrait painter. Winterhalter was first brought to the attention of Queen Victoria by the Queen of the Belgians and subsequently painted numerous portraits at the English court from 1842 till his death.

Princess Juliane was the third daughter of Francis, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld and the aunt of both Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. In 1796 she married the Grand Duke Constantine of Russia, second son of Tsar Paul I, but it was not a success and they were divorced in 1820. She had already settled in Switzerland in 1813. Her niece Feodora wrote of her ‘life full of trials of all kind, her youth thrown away at that court, and now alone, amongst strangers here is indeed a bitter cup to the last…poor aunt, life must be a burthen to her; and her feelings are so young still’. Princess Juliane wears a bracelet on her left arm which contains a miniature of Queen Victoria, based on the Queen’s head in the painting by Sir George Hayter of her marriage (RCIN 407165). In the background is a view of Boissière, near Geneva, where the Princess was living. In her Journal for 17 August 1848 the Queen described the portrait as ‘an indescribably like & beautiful picture of Aunt Julia’.