Victoria, Duchess of Kent (1786-1861)

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. The Duchess of Kent, Queen Victoria’s mother, is depicted in a landscape setting, wearing a morning dress with a bonnet and a dark blue/green shawl. It was originally hung over a door in the Dining-Room at Osborne, but Queen Victoria remarked that ‘I hardly think it will do for such a fine picture to be so much in shadow’ and it was transferred to the Queen’s Sitting-Room in Buckingham Palace. Signed and dated: F Winterhalter / 1849.