Comparative works: Related to a painting of the same subject by Joseph Karl Stieler, the uncle of the artist.

Therese (1792-1854) was a daughter of Frederick, Duke of Saxe-Altenburg, and Duchess Charlotte Georgine of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, eldest daughter of Charles II, Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. As a child she had grown up in the provincial capital of her father’s duchy of Saxe-Hildburghausen, and not in his later capital of Altenburg after the Saxon dukes reorganised their states in 1826. In 1809, Theresa was on the list of possible brides for Napoleon, but following the latter’s marriage to the Archduchess Marie-Louise, she married the Bavarian Crown Prince Ludwig, on 12 October 1810. Their wedding was the occasion of the first ever Oktoberfest, which has been repeated almost every year since. Her husband succeed as King in 1825 but her husband’s numerous love affairs caused her some pain, which she tolerated while refusing to allow his mistresses to attend her at court. On one occasion, in 1831, she left the capital to make her disapproval clear – nonetheless, despite the difficulties in their marriage she was the mother of nine children, the oldest, Maximilian, succeeding as king when Ludwig was deposed in the 1848 revolution. Therese proved to be a capable royal consort, heading the government during her husband’s frequent foreign trips, and having some considerable political influence. She was particularly popular with the Bavarian public and was considered the embodiment of an idealised image of queen, wife and mother and was involved in a great number of charitable organisations for widows, orphans and the poor. She was the object of great sympathy during her husband's very public infidelity with the notorious courtesan, Lola Montez, which contributed to the demands for his abdication in 1848.

Friedrich Dürck was the son of a wealthy businessman who lost his fortune in the post-Napoleonic turmoil due to poor speculations; he was fortunate to be appointed to be an inspector of the royal hunting lodge at Hubertusburg. Friedrich, whose artistic imagination is said to have been awakened by a soldier who was slightly injured and quartered with the Dürck family, initially received art lessons at the Leipzig Art Academy.

In 1822, his uncle, the royal Bavarian court painter Joseph Stieler, invited him to continue his education in Munich under his direction. Despite the fact that the director at the time, Peter von Langer, initially found him not mature enough to be admitted to the Mannheim “Antikensaal”, the school for younger artists, Stieler obtained the young Dürck’s admission to the Munich Academy of Fine Arts two years later. Dürck studied oil painting and portraiture with great enthusiasm, assisting his uncle with his portraits until 1829 and producing version of his uncle’s commissions. Among those was his version of Stieler’s famous portrait of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

Six years later, in 1828, Dürck began his own, independent career, exhibiting a portrait publicly for the first time and soon becoming a well-known painter in Munich. He traveled to Italy in 1836, spending much of the next year in Rome and Florence. After returning to Munich he began what became a highly successful career painting numerous personalities from public life and the Bavarian court, including King Ludwig I (1858). In 1849 he accepted an invitation to the Swedish court painting members of the royal family and in 1854 to the Austrian court in Vienna.

From about 1860 he began to paint genre and costume pictures, typical of the taste of the time, while continuing his career as a portraitist of the Bavarian royal and noble families.

In 1861 the former King, Theresa’s husband Ludwig I, commissioned Dürck to create two more portraits (of Anna von Greiner and Carlotta Freiin von Breidbach-Bürresheim), for his gallery of beauties (today in Nymphenburg Palace), a project begun by Dürck’s uncle, Joseph Stieler, and the only works not by his uncle in the collection. This collection of 36 portraits of women included members of the king’s own family as well as nobles and commoners, some being among his many lovers and representing an extraordinary attestation to his romantic infidelities as well as his susceptibility to feminine beauty.

Friedrich’s grandson was the bacteriologist Hermann Dürck, who made key advances in the study of beriberi, malaria, the pathological anatomy of bubonic plague, and the etiology and histology of pneumonia.