Ernst Heinrich Abel

Sophie Charlotte, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, Electress and Queen of Hanover

Sophia Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (1744-1818) married George III, King of Great Britain and Ireland (Cat. No. 2008-139) in 1761, the year after his accession to the throne. ¹ Since 1714, Great Britain was joined in personal union to the Guelphic Electorate of Hanover. The wedding ceremony took place in the Chapel Royal of St. James's Palace. Two weeks later, the couple was crowned in Westminster Abbey. As usual in marriages entered into for dynastic reasons, husband and wife had not met before their wedding. However, they had possibly seen miniatures of each other, which were often idealized according to contemporary taste. In fact, it is bequeathed that Sophia Charlotte's appearance was rather plain. Although their marriage was increasingly overshadowed by the king's mental illness since the late 1780s, it was a happy alliance with fifteen children. After Hanover had been elevated to the rank of a kingdom in the wake of the Congress of Vienna in 1814/15, Sophia Charlotte also bore the title "Queen of Hanover".

This miniature was created two years after the afore-mentioned marriage and shows an austere face with a high forehead and a powerful nose. ² The light colouring is painted with delicate, green-grey dotted shadings and the details of the gown are very delicately reproduced, too.

J.S.O.

¹ Cf. Cat. No. 2008-64.

² Whereas she was stylized as the ideal queen in the later portraits - think of the famous full-body painting by Thomas Gainsborough from 1781 (The Royal Collection, London) -, the portraits created soon after the wedding may well be compared to this miniature: portrait on a snuff box, approx. 1761 (The Royal Collection, London, Inv. No. RCIN 43892) or Sophia Charlotte with her son Edward August, born in 1767 (The Royal Collection, London, Inv. No. RCIN 452805).