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| Queen Charlotte Peter Edward Stroehling, 1807 Crown Copyright The Royal Collection Image Courtesy of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II |
Peter Edward Stroehling (1768-1826) created this masterpiece in 1807. Stroehling is a link between the works of the masters of the Dutch Golden Age and those of the early Nineteenth Century. The development of Dutch portraiture is neatly exhibited in the Royal Collection, and, this portrait of Queen Charlotte shows how Stroehling was influenced by the shimmering Seventeenth Century portraits on copper with which he was surrounded as a boy.
Though the artist worked all over Europe, by the dawn of the Nineteenth Century, he’d settled in London where he was styled, in 1810, as “Historical Painter to the Prince of Wales.” In fact, it was the Prince Regent (later King George IV) who commissioned this delicate painting of his mother.
While most of Stroehling’s work tended to be life-sized portraiture, the Royal Collection boasts a rare and important group of small-scale portraits on copper which Stroehling created in the Seventeenth-Century Dutch manner, but using Nineteenth-Century style. He called these little beauties, “Cabinet Pictures” and priced them at 200 guineas each—quite a huge cost at the time—even for a life-sized portrait.
George IV commissioned this painting and five others of his mother, Queen Charlotte, with her five daughters. He had them delivered to his London home, Carlton House, where he displayed them proudly. He particularly liked this one showing the Queen in a pale blue wrap and white gown. She wears a jeweled miniature of her husband, King George II, and at her side, her crown, orb and scepter are displayed on a cushion. Even more charming is the presence of her favorite dog, a Pomeranian.
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