Franz-Xavier Winterhalter was the Cecil Beaton of his day: an iconographer whose ability to flatter with a virtuoso mixture of Romance and elegance attracted the great and the good from around Europe. His images of Queen Victoria and Emperor Napoleon III still have a strong resonance today, and as recently as 2006 the museum of Baden- Württemberg paid a world record of over £1m at Christie's for a portrait of Olga, Queen of Württemberg, Grand Duchess of Russia.

After several years painting the English royal family, Winterhalter settled in Paris, a social hub for the European nobility, where he spent much of the 1840s and 1850s. With such established royal patronage, he had an easy passport to the courts and aristocracy of Europe. He was at his best as a painter of women – creating out of the frothy fashions of the times images of great elegance and sophistication. This is a painting created at the moment Winterhalter’s fame was spreading throughout Europe, soon after he had re-established himself in Paris after the revolutionary upheavals of 1848.

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Alexandra McMorrow
Director, 19th Century Art
AMcMorrow@christies.com
020 7389 2538