A watercolour of two full-length standing figures; Princess Alice is on the left, Princess Victoria in boys eighteenth-century costume on the right. Signed and dated at lower right: F Winterhalter / 1850.

On 24 May 1850 the nine-year-old Princess Royal (right) and the seven-year-old Princess Alice performed a minuet in honour of their mother's birthday. Both were dressed in costumes of the 1740s, echoing a fancy-dress ball held in 1845 at which the Queen and Prince had danced the same steps. This watercolour by Winterhalter was commissioned to record the event and was placed in the Queen's Portrait Album; in her journal entry of 23 July 1850, Queen Victoria recorded that Winterhalter had made "such a beautiful sketch in watercolour of Vicky & Alice, in their powder costumes".

Winterhalter was the premier portraitist in the mid-nineteenth century at many of the major European courts, working for those of London, Paris, Belgium, Berlin, Vienna, Madrid and St Petersburg, amongst others. He painted over 100 portraits for Queen Victoria and her extended family; the Queen esteemed him especially for his ability to capture a likeness, and the elegance, romance and naturalism of his works.