Carpenter was an admired, talented and successful professional artist, specialising in portraits; she had a thriving independent practice in London from the age of twenty, exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1814 to 1866 and her cultural circle included Richard Parkes Bonington, John Constable and William Collins. She was one of the most successful professional artists – and women artists – of her era. Though best remembered for her appealing bravura portraits of the 1830s and 1840s, which were sought after for their colour, light, strength and effect, and anatomical drawing, Self-portrait – painted at the age of fifty-nine – represents the culmination of her career. An earlier watercolour Self-portrait (British Museum, London), made when she was twenty-four, in the year of her marriage, exhibits a similar lack of idealisation compared to her commissioned female portraits and looks forward to the focus on real appearance and personality that is a feature of the later oil painting.