This portrait was painted for Queen Victoria during Disraeli's second tenure as British Prime Minister in 1877. Described as 'incurably and overwhelmingly romantic in his attitude to royalty' the unique relationship that Disraeli established with the Queen was based on a mixture of tact, good manners, humour and trust.

The Queen wrote on 29 March 1877 to Disraeli asking 'that he should be painted for her, for Windsor – by the great Artist Angeli who painted herself & who is coming to England immediately. It would only be the head & as he is wonderfully quick he would require but very few sittings. Lord Beaconsfield's career is one of the most remarkable in the Annals of her Empire, & none of her Ministers have ever shown her more consideration than he has.' Disraeli readily consented to do all he could, granting as many as six sittings to make a success of the portrait. In a letter to Lady Chesterfield in 1877 Disraeli described his third sitting, that morning, in Von Angeli's temporary studio at Buckingham Palace: it 'is the Queen's private dining room, fitted up with the Pagoda furniture that was brought from Brighton. Our meetings there would make up a good Genre picture: the fantastic apartment, the artist himself, very good-looking and a genius, the Primo in his crimson chair on a stage and the Private Secretary (Monty) reading the Despatches to me; for we work all the time and Von Angeli wishes us to do so.' The Queen recorded in her journal and in a letter that the portrait was great success, and Lord Ronald Gower described it as 'terribly and painfully like, as far as the mere mask goes.'

Von Angeli was paid 150 guineas by the Lord Chamberlain's Department in 1877, and it was one of the pictures exhibited by the artist in the Austrian section of the Paris exhibition the following year.

Signed and dated: H. v. Angeli / 1877