Another pose from the same sitting

The following is largely taken from her entry in the Dictionary of National Biography, written by R.H. Legge and revised by John Rosselli:

Born in Hamburg on 17 July 1831, Therese Carolina Tietjens was born in Hamburg on 17 July 1831, the daughter of Peter Albrecht Tietjens, a day labourer in the shipyards, and his wife, Maria Friederica Schroeder, who after her husband's death kept a small inn. She had two elder sisters and a brother. After a private musical education in Hamburg, subsidized by friends, she went to study in Vienna. Her voice was a soprano of singular sweetness and power; after a début in Auber's Le Maçon she made a mark (1849) as Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia. Until 1856 she sang principally at Frankfurt, Brno, and Vienna. She was engaged for the 1858 season at Her Majesty's by Benjamin Lumley, who simplified her name to Titiens, and her London début as Valentine in Les Huguenots was a great success. From that date, though she occasionally appeared on the continent (Turin, 1861; Paris, 1863; Naples, 1863, 1864) and in North America (1874, 1876), she made her home in London, and in 1868 became a naturalized British subject. [...] Her power and grandeur, her irreproachably maiden condition, her kindness, and her geniality met the expectations of mid-Victorian Britain; even her ultimate fatness and her weakness for travelling with unnecessary luggage became incorporated into a stereotype of the prima donna. As Lucrezia, Semiramide, and Countess Almaviva, she had competitors, but she had none as Cherubini's Medea or Beethoven's Leonore: here she was reckoned a 'consummate tragedian' (Davison). She gave the first London performances of several Verdi and Gounod parts, and sang Ortrud in Lohengrin. Though the Musical Times called her 'one of the greatest artists the world has yet seen', Shaw was to write of her 'essential obsolescence'. In 1871 she was awarded the gold medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society.

In 1875 cancer was diagnosed; after several operations and considerable pain Tietjens made on 19 May 1877 her last appearance (as Lucrezia), but collapsed at the end. She died on 3 October 1877 at her home, 51 New Finchley Road, St John's Wood, and was buried at Kensal Green cemetery on the 8th. Her funeral was attended by a large crowd, and marred by the presence of a 'rough element,' who damaged trees, stole flowers, and pressed around the grave.