Portrait of Marie, Duchess of Edinburgh, three-quarter length, leaning on a shawl thrown over a balustrade. She is facing half to the right, looking at the spectator, holding a fan in her right hand; wearing a blue, low-cut dress. There is a red column on the left and a view to the sea on the right.

Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna of Russia (1853–1920) was a daughter of Alexander II of Russia and Empress Maria Alexandrovna. In 1874 she married Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, the second son of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, with whom she had five children. In later years she loathed having to sit for her portrait, an experience she described as a 'great bore', and an 'aggravation of sorrow' (see Royal Collection RCIN 404784 ).

Correspondence between Richter and his painter colleague Paul Meyerheim indicates that the former probably worked on this portrait in the Autumn of 1873, whilst he was staying in Livadia. A photogravure print was made after it (Royal Collection RCIN 606066 ), and the Royal Collection also has a copy on porcelain (Royal Collection RCIN 401436 ), and a bust-length miniature by David Mossman (Royal Collection RCIN 420335 ).

Gustav Karl Ludwig Richter (1823–1884) was a pupil of Eduard Holbein at the Academy in Berlin. He became a pupil of Leon Cogniet in Paris, before moving to Rome, where he lived from 1847 to 1849. After travelling to Egypt, he painted the Construction of the Pyramids, (1859–72, Maximilianeum, Munich), commissioned by the King of Bavaria. In 1860, he became a member of the Academy in Berlin, and later began to devote himself to portraiture, of which his Queen Louise of Prussia (1879, Cologne Museum) is perhaps his best known.