DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61291#0029
RETURN TO LONDON
i7
numerous Princesses, being admitted to the
Palace at all hours of the day, in spite of the
then rigid court etiquette. Had his pen been
as facile as his brush, he had opportunities given
to few of describing the happy home, life of the
royal pair before it was clouded by the insanity
of the King, and when high hopes were still
entertained of the Prince of Wales, then a high-
spirited boy of twelve who had not yet betrayed
the vicious tendencies to which he yielded later.
George III. was but thirty-six when Gains-
borough painted his first portrait of him, and
Queen Charlotte, her old jealousy of those who
had preceded her in her husband’s affections
forgotten, was happy in her well-filled nursery,
her only real grief having been the death of one
of her younger boys, whose likeness Gains-
borough painted after his death, from a sketch
made just before the funeral.
Of the many Portrait Groups of the Royal
Family painted by Gainsborough the one which’
attracted most notice during the lifetime of the
artist was that of the three sisters, the Princess
Royal, Princess Augusta and Princess Elizabeth,
completed in 1783. It was about the hanging
of this picture that the artist finally quarrelled
with the Royal Academy in 1784, and the story
c
i7
numerous Princesses, being admitted to the
Palace at all hours of the day, in spite of the
then rigid court etiquette. Had his pen been
as facile as his brush, he had opportunities given
to few of describing the happy home, life of the
royal pair before it was clouded by the insanity
of the King, and when high hopes were still
entertained of the Prince of Wales, then a high-
spirited boy of twelve who had not yet betrayed
the vicious tendencies to which he yielded later.
George III. was but thirty-six when Gains-
borough painted his first portrait of him, and
Queen Charlotte, her old jealousy of those who
had preceded her in her husband’s affections
forgotten, was happy in her well-filled nursery,
her only real grief having been the death of one
of her younger boys, whose likeness Gains-
borough painted after his death, from a sketch
made just before the funeral.
Of the many Portrait Groups of the Royal
Family painted by Gainsborough the one which’
attracted most notice during the lifetime of the
artist was that of the three sisters, the Princess
Royal, Princess Augusta and Princess Elizabeth,
completed in 1783. It was about the hanging
of this picture that the artist finally quarrelled
with the Royal Academy in 1784, and the story
c