A Portrait of Charlotte Sophia of Mecklenburg-Strelitz

JOHANN GEORG ZIESENIS

(Copenhagen 1716 – Hanover 1776)

A Portrait of Charlotte Sophia of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Queen of George III of England

Oil on canvas: 26 ¾ x 21 in. 68 x 53.5 cm.

Provenance: Private Collection, Devon

Ziesenis was one of the most active purveyors of court portraiture in northern Europe during the middle years of the eighteenth century. Although born of a painter in Copenhagen, he moved around the courts of Hanover, Mannheim, Dresden, Brunswick and The Hague, between 1750 and 1770, depicting the ruling houses with a glamour and truth that places him alongside Antoine Pesne, Tischbein and even Mengs as a leading practioner of this genre. Perhaps his most significant era was at Hanover, where its connections with the English crown brought Ziesenis a new circle of clients and admirers. A contract between King George II and the artist, dated 1760 at Kensington, refers to Ziesenis as a portrait painter of various historical personages and engages him as a court and decorative painter. It was most likely during this sojourn around 1760 as Court Painter at Hanover that the artist would have executed firstly the portrait in the Royal Collection and secondly the present more intimate study of the young future Queen. In our image of her she is depicted gazing soulfully at the spectator, her eyes highlighted with pearly reflections, a characteristic technique of the artist. As in the artist’s contemporary portraits of Anna Amalia von Sachsen-Weimar and Princess Frederika of Prussia her hair is banked up in the current fashion. The young princess was extremely fond of displaying her jewellery, and the earrings which adorns her here reappear in the later portraits by Zoffany (such as the portrait with her two sons in the Royal Collection.) She is dressed simply, but with a maturity and dignity that belie her young years.

German museums carry many of the Ziesenis’s portraits that were formerly hung in the royal palaces. The list reads like a roll-call of the contemporary princely houses: Saxe-Coburg, Schaumburg-Lippe, Anhalt, de Paula, Brunswick, and in addition includes portraits of Frederick the Great both as a young and older man.