Swiss-Danish painter Bertha Wegmann (1847-1926) first met her close friend painter Jeanna Bauck when they were art students together in Munich. The couple moved together to Paris in 1881, where this painting was created, and Wegmann's career went from strength to strength: in 1881 and 1882 she exhibited at the Paris Salon, winning both an honorable mention for one painting and a medal for another. Not long after this she returned to Denmark where in 1883 she became the first woman ever to be elected to the Plenary Assembly of the Academy of Art. She exhibited widely and was one of the first women to be awarded the gold medal of Ingenio et Arte, the highest honor given to a Danish citizen by that nation's monarch. [http://womenintheactofpainting.blogspot.nl/2012/11/portrait-exchange.html]