In 1828, Stieler was commissioned to paint the now canonical portrait of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.(1) He received this commission by enticing Goethe with a beautiful portrait of the actress Fräulein von Hagen. According to Johann Peter Eckermann, who relates a conversation with Goethe: "'That is worth something,' said [Goethe], after we had observed [Fräulein von Hagen's portrait] for some time, 'is it not? Stieler is no fool. He employed this beautiful morsel as a bait for me, and whilst by such arts he induced me to sit, he flattered me with the hope that, under his pencil, another angel would appear, whilst he was only painting the head of an old man.'"(2) Stieler was already famous as a portraitist with royal patronage and as co-founder of the Kunstverein in Munich.

Stieler (1781–1858) began his career as a painter of portraits in miniature and executed his first large-scale portrait paintings under the tutelage of F. H. Füger in Vienna (1800). From Vienna, Stieler traveled to Poland, and ended up in Paris training with the renowned Neoclassical portrait painter, François Gérard. Stieler traveled to Italy between 1810 and 1812, and would have been exposed to the work of the Nazarenes. After his Italian sojourn, Stieler returned to Munich and received commissions from the Bavarian court to create portraits of some of the most famous men and beautiful women of his time. In addition to these imperial portraits, Stieler is also known for his more intimate painted portraits of the bourgeoisie. In both cases his drawings capture striking and expressive features, and often betray his method of sketching from life.

In the Speth portrait, evidence of Stieler’s rapid technique can be seen in the pentimenti found in the cursory middle-class costume. Though not as highly finished as some of his preparatory sketches for paintings (as in the case of his drawing of Goethe), the Speth drawing is delicately highlighted in white chalk and signed with Stieler’s full name and dated—designating it as a finished work in its own right.(3)

Kaufmann rightly believes that "elements of the artist’s style found in the work may lead to a reinterpretation of his portraiture."(4) Rather than this representing a combination of his French and English manners or a midway point between his courtly and bourgeois portrait styles, the Speth portrait appears to be part of a more Romantic tradition of representing friends and colleagues— Künstlerfreundschaftsbilder—developed a decade earlier by the Nazarene painters Friedrich Overbeck and Carl Philipp Fohr in Rome.

In addition to being a member of the Cathedral Chapter and court preacher, Balthasar von Speth (1774–1846) was also an art critic, amateur artist, and collector. He wrote extensively on seventeenth century Italian art as well as on the work of his own contemporaries.(5) Speth operated in the same social networks as Stieler, known to be his acquaintance; a mutual friend, Ludwig Emil Grimm also created several portraits of him.(6) A graphite portrait by Grimm, which is also in the Crocker, identifies the sitter as Speth and claims that it was completed ad vivum in 1817.(7) Grimm, the younger brother to the famous philologists Jakob and Wilhelm, executed many portraits of his circle of well-known friends, for example Heinrich Heine,(8) Niccolò Paganini,(9) and Clemens Brentano.(10)

Freyda Spira, in William Breazeale, with Cara Denison, Stacey Sell, and Freyda Spira, A Pioneering Collection: Master Drawings from the Crocker Art Museum, exh. cat. Sacramento and tour, 2010