See also: Descendants of GeorgeIII King GeorgeIII wit Anon. engraving after Lucius Gahagan, bust length (illus. M. Levey, A Royal Subject, Portraits of Queen Charlotte, National Gallery, 1977, p 23). Gahagan had seen the Queen at Bath in December 1817. Painting by Johann Zoffany, whole length seated, with her two brothers and Prince William and Princess Charlotte. Royal Collection (Sir Oliver Millar, The Later Georgian Pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty The Queen, I, 1969, no.1207, pl.30). Exhibited RA 1773 (320). The figure of the Queen alone recurs in a painting attributed to Zoffany in the Tryon Palace, New Bern, North Carolina.

By all reports, the king and queen had an unusually happy marriage, and George III was a devoted father and husband. But court life was difficult for Charlotte, who clashed with her mother-in-law over the formal rules of the British aristocracy and found the expectation to bear plenty of heirs exhausting. By the time she had borne 14 of her 15 children, she wrote that “I don’t think a prisoner could wish more ardently for his liberty than I wish to be rid of my burden.” Miniature by J. R., bust length. Royal Collection (R. J. B. Walker, The eighteenth and early nineteenth century Miniatures in the Collection of Her Majesty The Queen, 1992, no.296).

Charlotte did have some influence on political affairs through the King. Her influence was discreet and indirect, as demonstrated in the correspondence with her brother Charles. She used her closeness with GeorgeIII to keep herself informed and to make recommendations for offices. [20] Apparently her recommendations were not direct, as she on one occasion, in 1779, asked her brother Charles to burn her letter, because the King suspected that a person she had recently recommended for a post was the client of a woman who sold offices. [20] Charlotte particularly interested herself in German issues. She took an interest in the War of the Bavarian Succession (1778–1779), and it is possible that it was due to her efforts that the King supported British intervention in the continuing conflict between JosephII and Charles Theodore of Bavaria in 1785. [20] Husband's first period of illness [ edit ] Portrait by Nathaniel Dance-Holland, c. 1768 In the contextual analysis below, you will read more about who Queen Charlotte was and the collection of portraits that Scottish portraitist, Allan Ramsay, painted of her. This will be followed by a formal analysis, providing a brief overview of one example of his portraits of her, titled Queen Charlotte, from 1762, which is part of the Royal Collection Trust in the United Kingdom. He was a court painter to King George III and was a prolific portrait painter, creating numerous portraits of royal figures. Near the end of his life, a dislocation of his right arm left him unable to continue painting. He also pursued other disciplines like literary and scholarly studies. An article by Lillian Crosland, “Women’s Courage Praised” The Charlotte Observer. November 7, 1934, is described as:

Allan Ramsay became one of the “Principal Painters in Ordinary” for King George III, a position he reportedly started from 1761 to his death in 1784.

Were Queen Charlotte and King George in love?

Regardless of the pains of motherhood, Queen Charlotte’s arranged marriage to King George III is heralded as a success story by historians because of the couple’s obvious affection for each other — evidenced by letters exchanged between the couple during their rare moments of separation. Take, for instance, this April 26, 1778 letter she wrote to her husband nearly 17 years into their marriage: The research notes / rough draft for this work can be found here. Addendum 2: Mistakes in Gregory (2016) Medal by Thomas Wyon sr. and T. Martyn, with conjoined busts of the King and Queen (L. Brown, A Catalogue of British Historical Medals 1760-1960: The Accession of George III to the Death of William IV, 1980, no.628).

Alicia has been working for artincontext.com since 2021 as an author and art history expert. She has specialized in painting analysis and is covering most of our painting analysis. As for Rogers’ quote from Horace Walpole, a contemporary of Charlotte, we see a description of the new Queen with a hypercritical focus on how well conforms to the English beauty standards of the day. The complete quote is:Painting by Nathaniel Dance, whole length standing with robes of state. Uppark (illus. D. Goodreau, Nathaniel Dance, exhibition catalogue, Kenwood, 1977, fig.8). Exhibited RA 1769 (31) with a companion piece of the King. Versions belong to the Prince of Hanover, and a three-quarter length version of the Queen alone was on the Munich art market 1931. The principal surveys of Charlotte’s iconography are contained in the catalogues of the Royal Collection (Sir Oliver Millar, The Later Georgian Pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty The Queen, I, 1969 and R. J. B. Walker, The eighteenth and early nineteenth century Miniatures in the Collection of Her Majesty The Queen, 1992) and in the National Gallery exhibition catalogue by Michael Levey (M. Levey, A Royal Subject, Portraits of Queen Charlotte, 1977).