This painting is a copy, by Mary Curtis, of an original portrait by Franz Xaver Winterhalter which is now lost, as is its companion painting of the Emperor Napoleon III, also copied by Curtis (RCIN 402022). The originals were in Paris. They also appear to have been hung in the French Embassy in London for a ball there in May 1854. Mary Curtis was commissioned to copy them in December 1855. The Empress Eugénie was the younger daughter of the Count of Montijo. She married Napoleon III in January 1853 and was Regent in the summer of 1870 when the Emperor was engaged in the Franco-Prussian war. After the battle of Sedan, when Napoleon III was captured along with his whole army, she fled to England with her son. In this painting the Empress is wearing her state robes, the ribbon of the Order of Maria Luisa of Spain and some of the pearl jewels from the Crown Collection. Queen Victoria wrote of her in 1855: ‘It is not such gt beauty – but such grace, elegance, sweetness & nature. Her manners are charming. The profile & figure – beautiful & particularly distingué’.