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 Alexandra of Denmark, or Alix, as she was known in the family, is wearing a white ball dress with the badge of the Order of Victoria and Albert. Her brooch and ear-rings were given to her on her marriage in 1863 by Prince Albert Edward. The Prince's elder sister, Victoria, the Crown Princess of Prussia, described her as having ‘a lovely figure but very thin, a complexion as beautiful as possible. Very fine white regular teeth and very fine large eyes – with extremely prettily marked eyebrows. A very fine well-shaped nose, very narrow but a little long – her whole face is very narrow, her forehead too but well shaped and not at all flat. Her voice, her walk, carriage and manner are perfect, she is one of the most ladylike and aristocratic looking people I ever saw’ and ‘outrageously beautiful’. Queen Victoria thought her a ‘dear, lovely being’.

When she came to England for her wedding she was received with great enthusiasm by the public and the poet laureate, Alfred Tennyson wrote:

Sea King's daughter from over the sea,
Alexandra!
Saxon and Norman and Dane are we,
But all of us Danes in our welcome of thee,
Alexandra!

Signed and dated: Fr. Winterhalter / 1864.