Louis Gallait (1810-87) born in Tournai, trained under Cornelis Cels and Philippe Auguste Hennequin in the neo-classical style. He moved to Antwerp, and was a pupil of Mathieu Ignace van Brée (see RCIN 405277). He was a member of the academies of Brussels, Berlin, Dresden, Munich, and, in 1853, Vienna. He showed his paintings in London from 1836 to 1872, and was made a Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur in 1862. His painting The Last Rites given to Counts Egmont and Hoorn was considered the jewel in the collection of the Museum at Tornai. He was judged to have successfully melded elements of the French romantic and classical traditions. This is one of four paintings of Gallait acquired by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert between 1846 and 1850 (RCIN 400820, 403630, 405060 & 406466).

Princess Charlotte of Belgium (1840-1927) was born in Laeken, Brussels, the only daughter of Leopold I, King of the Belgians (1790–1865) and Louise, Princess of Orléans (1812–1850). She was a first cousin to both Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. In 1857 Charlotte married her second cousin, Archduke Maximilian of Austria, the younger brother of Emperor Franz Josef of Austria. After living in Italy where the Archduke was the governor of Lombardy and Venetia, they went to Mexico in the early 1860s, where Maximilian was installed as the nominal emperor by Napoleon III, eager to claim Mexico as a French satellite state. Taking the name Carlota, Charlotte endeavoured to fulfill her duties as Empress. Shortly after the coronation, however, Napoleon III began to withdraw his troops from Mexico, abandoning the fledgling monarchy. The situation was made worse by a United States blockade prohibiting French reinforcements. Carlota returned to Europe in an effort to win assistance for her husband, in Paris, Vienna, and Rome. She failed, and as a result her health and emotional state deteriorated, and she never returned to Mexico. The success of republican forces under Benito Juárez led to the capture of Maximilian and his execution in 1867. Carlota was certified insane by psychiatrists, and spent the remainder of her life in seclusion at Miramar Castle near Trieste, and then at the Castle of Bouchout in Meise, Belgium, where she died on 19 January 1927.

In an elegant interior before panelled wall-paintings or a tapestry, the young Princess sits on the edge of a gilded chair, facing slightly to the left. She wears a Greek costume with a red velvet jacket and headdress over a white dress; a robe lined with silk lies over the right arm of the chair.