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Category: Queen Charlotte

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She was no victim

She was married (miserably) at age 17 to save her family’s fortunes. She not only survived, but went on to create a new art form.
Mary Delany (née Granville), date unknown, by John Opie, courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London
Mary Granville Delany was an eighteenth century English bluestocking. She survived an awful first marriage to become famous in later life as an artist.
Mary Granville grew up in the last years of the Stuart royal family. She had a traditional feminine education that would have served her well had her family’s ambition been manifested.  That was that she would become a Maid of Honour to Anne, Queen Regnant of Great Britain. With Anne’s death in 1714 and the passing of the British throne to the Hanoverians, these aspirations came to naught.
Passiflora laurifolia L., collage, by Mary Granville Delany, courtesy of the British Museum
Mary’s Tory family had backed the wrong horse. To compensate, she was married off at age 17 to an alcoholic Parliamentarian 43 years her senior. Her uncle’s grim hope was that when Alexander Pendarves died, Mary’s inheritance would compensate her for her misery.
Later, Mary wrote, “when I was led to the altar, I wished from my soul, I had been led, as Iphigenia was, to be sacrificed. I was sacrificed.” And upon his death seven years later, Mary found he’d left her nothing but a widow’s pension. He’d never bothered to rewrite his will.
Pancratium maritimum L., collage, by Mary Granville Delany, courtesy of the British Museum
But he’d inadvertently left her something invaluable. Widows could move through society, unlike wives or unmarried women. Adept at the social arts, Mary became a traveling houseguest, landing eventually in the home of the Duchess of Portland. She was the wealthiest woman in England and a keen amateur botanist.
Mary had no shortage of suiters, but she wasn’t inclined to remarry. In 1743, however, she was proposed to by a man she’d known for over a decade. Dr. Patrick Delany was a widower, churchman and passionate botanist and gardener. But he was also a commoner. The Granvilles balked at the perceived misalliance. She married him anyway. It was a true love match.
Delany encouraged his wife in her artwork, which included painting, shell-work, paper-cuttingand needlework. They were happily married for 25 years. But at the age of 68, Mary Delany was again a widow.
Rubus odoratus L., collage, by Mary Granville Delany, courtesy of the British Museum
She returned to her friend, now the Dowager Duchess of Portland, at Bulstrode Park, where the Duchess housed her enormous botany collection. It was there that Mary Delany met botanists Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander and where Mary developed the first collage in western art.
Decoupagewas fashionable among ladies of the court. Mary melded it with paper-cutting, designing what she called ‘paper mosaicks’ of flowers. She cut minute bits of colored tissue paper, using lighter and darker bits to make shadows. She stuck them on paper blackened with India ink. Each of her final pictures is comprised of hundreds of tiny pieces of paper.
Mary Delany became famous for these ‘paper mosaicks’, and scientists and donors began sending her samples to cut. Ultimately, she did over a thousand of them. They are now in the British Museum.
Mary Delany ended her life in a small cottage at Windsor with a pension from King George III and Queen Charlotte. Ironically, the Hanover dynasty which had ruined her fortunes as a young girl ended up supporting her as an old woman.
Mary Delany is a reminder that we need not be a slave to our past experiences. She rose past an abusive marriage into a life of creative freedom. 
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A feminist painter and her feminist royal patron

It’s very trendy right now to ‘discover’ women artists. But how lost were they, really?
Mary Moser, c. 1770-71, George Romney, courtesy National Gallery
I’m in Edinburgh finishing a portrait this week. My subject bought me a copy of The Lady. This is one of Britain’s longest-running magazines. Founded in 1885, it was where the gentry advertised for domestic servants. Between the nanny ads and the horoscopes, there are some pieces of surprising interest, including a biography of 18th century painter Mary Moser.
Moser is best remembered for her decorative painting at Frogmore House, an English country house within the Home Park at Windsor. Started in 1680, it was largely renovated by Queen Charlotte, whom Americans know as the wife of King George III.
A Vase of Flowers, 1792-97, Mary Moser, Frogmore House, courtesy Royal Collection Trust
But the Queen was much more than that. Among other things, she was a champion of women artists and a keen amateur botanist who helped expand Kew Gardens. It was this interest in botany that led to her hiring Moser to decorate the South Pavilion at Frogmore House.
The house was more than a century old when Queen Charlotte purchased it in 1792. She used it as a retreat from nearby Windsor Castle, where she and her daughters could practice their hobbies of “painting, drawing, needlework, japanning, reading and ‘botanising’.” The Queen had borne 15 children (13 of whom lived to adulthood) and had a mentally-ill husband, so it’s perhaps understandable that she then built another retreat within the gardens of this retreat. That’s Frogmore Cottage, where the Duke and Duchess of Sussex now live with their new baby.
Queen Charlotte, 1761, studio of Allan Ramsay
Moser was already well-regarded as a floral painter when she took up the commission at Frogmore House. She had been trained by her father, an enamellist and himself a drawing tutor to George III. She was one of 36 artists who joined together to form the Royal Academy of Arts. At the age of 24, she was the youngest Academician and one of just two women among the founders. The other was Angelica Kauffman.
Moser did not marry until later in life. By convention, a woman’s professional life ended upon marriage. “[P]erhaps there was no man worth giving it all up for,” suggested The Lady.
Moser carried on an affair with miniaturist Richard Cosway. He was well-known as a libertine, and “commonly described as resembling a monkey.” (His wife was, in turn, getting it on with Thomas Jefferson.) In his notebooks, Conway made lascivious comments and “invidious comparisons between her and Mrs Cosway,” implying that Moser was more sexually responsive than his wife. He died insane, just in case you’re wondering if there’s cosmic justice.
A Bunch of Flowers, 1792-97, Mary Moser, Frogmore House, courtesy Royal Collection Trust
Moser married at age 49. Bowing to social pressure, she retired and began exhibiting as an amateur under her married name. She’d made a pile of money as a painter; the Frogmore commission alone earned her ÂŁ900, which is equivalent to ÂŁ100,000 today. She left most of her wealth to women: relatives, friends, and the wives of other artists.
It’s very trendy right now to ‘discover’ women artists. But how lost were they in the first place? Artemisia Gentileschi, for example, may not have been a household name twenty years ago, but was well-known to students of the Baroque.
The problem wasn’t so much with their own times, but with the peculiar blinders of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Moser’s membership in the Royal Academy was circumscribed to some degree by her gender; she could not attend nude sketch sessions, for example, and some meetings were closed to her. But all in all, she had a happy and complete life as a painter.
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Monarchs and Militants

Portrait of King George III, 1779, by Sir Joshua Reynolds
The Age of Revolution was a time of great change in the intellectual and political life of Europe and America. Portrait painting—previously considered an inferior art—rose in prominence. On the one hand, portraits reached a peak of representational virtuosity. At the same time, they became overwhelmingly symbol-laden and propagandistic.
The majority of Europe still lived under kings who ruled by Divine Right. Those kings generally were painted in the full splendor of their office, with their authority spelled out with symbols like crown, scepter and orb.
Portrait of Queen Charlotte in Her Coronation Robes, 1779, by Sir Joshua Reynolds
Alone among his fellow monarchs, George III’s Divine Right had been clipped by the British Constitution. His authority was also inevitably reduced by the loss of the American colonies. Sir Joshua Reynolds’ portrait of him shows him overwhelmed by his coronation robes and by the looming darkness of Westminster Abbey. Likewise the character of Queen Charlotte in her matching portrait is reduced despite her royal setting. She is restrained and modest; in short, a model housewife of her period.
Napoleon on his Imperial throne, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, 1806
Contrast this with the power and authority radiating from Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’ radical, domineering portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte. Ingres drew together an absurd variety of classical allusions to lend credibility to the upstart Emperor of France.
In his right hand Napoleon holds Charlemagne’s scepter; in his left  is the hand of justice. He is crowned with Caesar’s golden laurel wreath. His ermine hood, velvet cloak, and satin tunic all conjure imperial imagery, as does the eagle on the carpet beneath his feet. Because the Ghent Altarpiece was in the Louvre at the time Ingres painted, it is presumed that he modeled the pose on its central figure, The Almighty.
George Washington (Lansdowne Portrait), 1796, by Gilbert Stuart
Gilbert Stuart, the image-maker for the new American states, chose the opposite symbolism to portray George Washington, showing him as a sober and industrious workman creating a new age. In the new democracy, crown has morphed into cockaded hat, orb and scepter into a dress sword representing democracy.  The rule of law is paramount, represented by both the books and the pen and paper on his desk.
This week I am writing about portrait painting during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. These posts are based closely on the Royal Academy of Art’s 2007 show, Citizens and Kings: Portraits in the Age of Revolution, 1760-1830. 
Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!