The picture was painted when the artist was nineteen and apprenticed as a lithographic draughtsman to Messrs. Dickinson. Born in Marylebone, the only son of a merchant, Wells was educated at Lancing College before entering Dickinson's workshop in 1843. He attended evening classes at Leigh's well-known art school in Newman Street, and in 1850 went to Paris when he studied for six months under Thomas Couture. Meanwhile in 1846 he had begun to exhibit minatures at the Royal Academy, quickly establishing an aristocratic clientele; a miniature of Princess Mary of Cambridge, dated 1853 and exhibited at the R.A. the following year, is at Windsor. Wells continued to paint minatures until about 1860, after which he turned to full-scale portrait painting.