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 Victoria was the eldest daughter of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Here she is depicted in a white evening dress, wearing the badges of the Order of Victoria and Albert and the Order of Louisa of Prussia. In 1858 she had married Frederick William, Crown Prince of Prussia. This painting and a companion portrait of her husband (RCIN 404905) were hung in the Kaiser Freidrich Palais in Berlin. They were left in the Princess' (then Empress') will in 1898 to the Prince of Wales and sent to England in 1901.

Signed and dated: Fr Winterhalter / 1867. Inscribed on the back Weihnachten 1867.