Portrait of the artist's wife, Marie Sophie Robert, half length, with a dog and holding a tea cup

Johann Heinrich Tischbein received his early training from, among others, his brother Johann Valentin (1715-68) before travelling in 1748 with his patron, Graf von Stadion, to France. He studied in Paris for a year with Carle Vanloo, before journeying on to Venice (where he trained with Giovanni Battista Piazzetta) and ultimately Rome where he stayed for two years before returning in 1751 to Stadion's country-seat at Biberach. The following year Tischbein settled permanently in Kassel as court painter to the Landgrave William VIII of Hesse-Kassel.

In 1756 Tischbein married Marie Sophie Robert (1726-1759), the daughter of a well established Huguenot family whose father was the Princely Kommissar of the French colony in Kassel. There are three known autograph versions of the present work. The primary version was painted in 1753 in the year of their marriage, and is now in the Gottfried-Keller-Stiftung, the Kunstmuseum Bern. A second, previously with a private American collector was with Colnaghi in 1989. A third portrait, executed posthumously as a pendant to his self-portrait of 1761 is now in the Kunsthalle, Hamburg. Marie Sophie died giving birth to their second daughter. In 1763 Tischbein married her younger sister Marianne Pernette (1738-1764), but she died only six months later.