Royal Subject: Portraits of Queen Charlotte

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Painting on copper by Johann Zoffany, bust length in robes of state. Royal Collection (Sir Oliver Millar, The Later Georgian Pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty The Queen, I, 1969, no.1198). Though they married for political gain rather than love, Charlotte and George held each other in high esteem. In a 1778 letter to her husband, the queen wrote: A lead statue probably of Queen Charlotte, dating to c. 1775, stands on Queen Square in Bloomsbury, London, [65] [66] and there are two statues of her in Charlotte, North Carolina: at Charlotte Douglas International Airport [67] and at the International Trade Center. [68] 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.” Medal attributed to P. Kempson celebrating the Queen’s visit to Bath (L. Brown, A Catalogue of British Historical Medals 1760-1960: The Accession of George III to the Death of William IV, 1980, no.934).

Drawing by Henry Edridge, whole-length seated. Royal Collection, where there is also a duplicate dated 1804 (A. P. Oppé, English Drawings, Stuart and Georgian periods, in the Collection of His Majesty the King at Windsor Castle, 1950, nos.198-99, pl.10). A half-length miniature copy attributed to John Hopkins in the Royal Collection (R. J. B. Walker, The eighteenth and early nineteenth century Miniatures in the Collection of Her Majesty The Queen, 1992, no.833); another by Paul Fischer, dated 1823, sold Sotheby’s, 10 June 1993, lot 173, from Stanton Harcourt. Painting by G. D. Matthieu, three-quarter length seated, the King’s miniature on her left wrist. Gripsholm Castle (Katalog, Portratt fore 1809, 1951, no.1192). After the royal coronation a few weeks later, Princess Sophia officially became Queen Charlotte. Eager to assume her royal duties, Queen Charlotte, who spoke French and German, threw herself into studying English. She hired both German and English staff for her ladies-in-waiting cohort and even adopted the very English tradition of drinking tea. Medals by John Kirk (L. Brown, A Catalogue of British Historical Medals 1760-1960: The Accession of George III to the Death of William IV, 1980, nos.168, 184).Medal by Julien Colibert (L. Brown, A Catalogue of British Historical Medals 1760-1960: The Accession of George III to the Death of William IV, 1980, no.27, as 1761, but Colibert came to England in 1769). While most of this work focuses on the evolution and variations of the myth, we will start with a brief overview of her.

The portrait of Queen Charlotte Sophia, consort of George III, by Ramsay clearly shows a Negro strain. Horace Walpole, who saw her, wrote of her, “nostrils spreading too wide; mouth has the same fault.” During the Regency [ edit ] Queen Charlotte in her later years, painted by Stroehling, 1807, Royal CollectionKing George III in coronation robes (c. 1765) by Allan Ramsay; Allan Ramsay, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons A century later, Queen Victoria agreed to serve as the godmother of Sarah Forbes Bonetta, a young girl born into a prominent Yoruba family. In the late 1840s, King Ghezo of Dahomey (most recently portrayed on the silver screen in The Woman King) defeated Bonetta’s tribe, killed her parents and enslaved her. After a British captain failed to convince Ghezo to abandon his role in the slave trade in 1850, the king gifted Bonetta to him as consolation. Upon the pair’s arrival in England, Victoria agreed to take the girl “under her protection,” paying for her education and looking out for her throughout her life, wrote historian Caroline Bressey in a 2005 journal article. Miniature attributed to Anne Mee, bust length. Royal Collection, with two replicas (R. J. B. Walker, The eighteenth and early nineteenth century Miniatures in the Collection of Her Majesty The Queen, 1992, nos.875-77). Miss Foldsone (Mrs Anne Mee) drew the Queen in November 1789 and ‘at different times through life she attended the Royal family to take their miniatures’ ( Journals of Mrs Papendiek, 1887, II, pp 143-44).

Like her husband, Queen Charlotte was also interested in books and her substantial library included many volumes on botany, literature and the theatre. In the early 1790s she acquired the Frogmore estate at Windsor which she and her daughters used increasingly as a rural retreat, particularly for botanical and artistic activity. Queen Charlotte commissioned Mary Moser, a founder member of the Royal Academy, to decorate the walls and ceiling at Frogmoremaking the house not just a female domain but one with links to some of the most important female artists and patrons in the eighteenth century.

The 'madness' of King George 

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: