Niessen was a portraitist, as well as a landscape and history painter. He also did lithographs and etchings. He studied with Risse in Düsseldorf and in 1847 he went to Paris, where he remained for two years. He went to Italy in 1858 and stayed there for eight years. On his return from Italy he became keeper at the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne. The present drawing was executed in Düsseldorf, before his departure to Paris