Portrait of Eva Charlotte Friederike, Gräfin von Einsiedel (1704-1758), half-length, in a blue silk dress trimmed with fur

Anton Graff was the foremost society painter of the late-eighteenth century in Dresden. He was appointed court painter to the Elector Friedrich-Christian in 1766 and taught at the Hochschule der Bildende Künste. Graff's work consisted mainly of portraits of the aristocracy and the newly-enriched professional classes of Saxony and Prussia.

The present work is one of a group of portraits that Graff painted for the Einsiedel family. Eva Charlotte Friederike, Gräfin von Einsiedel was the mother of Detlev Carl, Graf von Einsiedel. An inventory of their family castle at Wolkenburg, dated 1890, lists three family portraits, one of Detlev, one of his first wife Sidonie Albertine (both now in the Gemäldegalerie, Dresden, nos. 3421, 3564) and another, untraced, that may well be the present picture (E. Berckenhagen, Anton Graf Leben und Werk, Berlin, 1967, pp. 101-2).