Golda Meir's lifelong devotion to the Zionist struggle for an independent Jewish homeland began during her youth in the United States. The daughter of a Russian immigrant, she first became immersed in Zionist activities in Milwaukee, where she had been educated and was teaching school. Shortly after World War I, she and her husband, Morris Meyerson, moved to Palestine and began to work toward the establishment of Israel. When Israel became a reality in 1948, Meir became the new nation's ambassador to Moscow, and in 1956 she was appointed its minister of foreign affairs. In 1969, she succeeded Levi Eshkol as prime minister and had the responsibility of presiding over the Arab-Israeli war of 1973, which, after a disastrous beginning, turned into a qualified victory. Regarding her expatriation from the United States to Israel, Meir once mused, "I loved America," but added, "this was how it had to be."

Meir sat for this portrait a year after her retirement from public life. The maker of the likeness, American realist Raphael Soyer, found no trace of "pomp and pretense" in his subject. As he painted, he "regretted more and more" that he did not have more time to work on the picture in her presence.