Winterhalter had been recommended to the Queen, for his easy-going nature as much as for his artistic skill, by the Queen's beloved aunt Louise, Queen of the Belgians. He had worked for her and for her father, the King of the French, and by coming to London Winterhalter would be enlarging the circle of European courts at which he was to be so successful. The Queen had acquired, before his arrival in London May 1842, at least three portraits of her relations, including the little Prince Philip of Württemburg, and the portrait of Queen Louise and her elder son. These are painted in the rather hard, smooth manner which still bears traces of his years of study in Freiburg im Breisgau and Munich. With Queen Victoria he was an instant success. He became, in her words, a "personal, attached friend of more than 30 years standing"; she did not hesitate to compare him with Veronese and Van Dyck and she greeted (almost) every new portrait with unqualified admiration. Between 1842 and 1861 he probably paid fifteen visits to England; and he was still in touch with the Queen in 1870. When he died three years later the Queen described his death to the Crown Princess as "terrible" and "quite irreparable"; and in the eyes of the Crown Princess, "There was not another portrait painter like him in the world". Certainly he had produced for the Queen a range of family portraits unsurpassed in quantity by any other painter in the history of the royal portrait in Britain. His portraits are extremely accomplished, very well put together, credible and with something of the sympathy -- indeed, the kindliness -- and something of the panache and the delight in the lively handling of paint that Winterhalter would have admired in the portraits of Lawrence which he would have seen in Queen Victoria's houses.
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