Bertha Froriep (1833-1920) studied with Friedrich Martersteig and Ferdinand Wilhelm Pauwels in Weimar. From 1870 she exhibited regualry in Dresden and Berlin. In addition to her portrait of Goethe, she painted the German poet Friedrich Rückert in the 1860s, and Walt Whitman, in 1864. She lived most of her life in Weimar.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) poet, critic, playwright, and novelist, was a true polymath. He produced a body of work which embraced epic and lyric poetry, prose and verse dramas, four novels, memoirs, an autobiography, literary and aesthetic criticism, and treatises on botany, anatomy, and colour. In addition, more than 10,000 letters written by him are extant, as are nearly 3,000 drawings, silhouettes and etchings. These are published in a catalogue raisonné of ten volumes, by the Nationale Forschung und Gedenkstätten der klassischen deutschen Literatur in Weimar.

A copy after the portrait by Heinrich Christoph Kolbe (1826; Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne).

Inscriped on the reverse of the canvas: 'Goethe v Kolbe cop. B Froriep'