Roslin painted this portrait of himself and his wife, the artist Marie Suzanne Giroust, as a token of their friendship with Henrik Wilhelm Peill, the man in the pastel. It was produced when Peill left Paris in 1767, and the gold box in the foreground may have been a farewell gift from him. The younger woman portrayed in miniature on the box is probably the younger Anna Johanna Grill, whom Peill was to marry, while the older woman is assumed to be her mother, the elder Anna Johanna Grill.