nothin Princesses Sainted And Satirized | New Haven Independent

Princesses Sainted And Satirized

Johan Zoffany

“Queen Charlotte”, oil on canvas, 1771.

Charlotte heard a child prodigy perform his music and was so profoundly impressed she commissioned six sonatas from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, eight years old. His father Leopold did the negotiating.

Caroline presided over a debate between Isaac Newton and Wilhelm Leibnitz as these stellar geniuses tackled nothing less than the nature of the universe and how Christianity fit into the cosmos.

And Augusta, mother of George III, was crucial in shaping the character of that rigid monarch, against whom we Americans successfully revolted in 1776.

How three German princesses — Caroline of Ansbach, Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, and Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz — married into the British royal family and helped to influence the cultural, political, and social arc of the 18th century is the subject of the latest exhibition at the Yale Center for British Art (YCBA): Enlightened Princesses: Caroline, Augusta, Charlotte, and the Shaping of the Modern World.” The show runs until April 30.

You first meet the women on YCBA’s second floor like three Hanoverian sisters” greeting you in their parlor, in massive larger-than life formal portraits. They are elegance and perfection personified in shining paints and glittering jewels, larger-than-life idealized figures, which they were in the eyes of some of their naive subjects, to be sure.

However, with a quick right turn into the first of about ten small, image-packed galleries, you encounter the gleefully coarse satirical takes on these very same women and their families. James Gillray, gleefully cruel satirist extraordinaire of the era, used broadsides as in his fabulous print Anti-Saccharrites — or John Bull and his Family leaving off the use of sugar” to make fun of the gross use of sugar in the royal households, a sharp hit from English 18th century progressives who were trying to organize a boycott of the sugar trade in order to help abolish slavery.

And the royals were not aiding the cause. As the informative label tells you, at this time: The moral failings of the royal family, on view.”

That almost shocking pivot, in the space of a few feet, from the viewer being awed by royal image to chuckling at its caricature, sets a kind of rhythm for the show.

It tells you not only about what was happening in the 18th century version of branding,” a subject near if not dear also to the present moment, but also other lessons: A rising and educated middle class was accessing knowledge through an explosion of newspapers, broadsides, books, and prints, all shining all kinds of new light, curious and often irreverent, on the royals and other elites.

Maybe the princesses experienced this 18th century knowledge explosion not so differently than they might today, where social media’s swift and unrelenting digital gaze is performing the same kind of discomfiting function, turning everything private into public information.

John Vanderbank

“Isaac Newton,” oil on canvas, 1726.

Under the leadership of lead curator Joanna Marschner of the Historic Royal Palaces in England, the YCBA has partnered with a host of institutions to create this enormous exhibition, the first of its kind that to explore the contributions of these influential women.

What resonates for me is how serious these highly educated women were. They appear not to have been satisfied with behind-the-scenes philanthropic sponsorship of scientists, artists, and writers; they wanted to have real relationships, and to make contributions in their own right.

Queen Caroline was so eager to meet Jonathan Swift, the author of Gulliver’s Travels, that she wouldn’t let politics get in the way. She pursued Swift even after he let London for Dublin for political reasons, following the accession of Caroline’s husband George I to the throne.

Beneath an oil-on-canvas 1718 portrait of the satirist by Charles Jervas, we learn that Swift received his invitation to Caroline’s drawing room through Henrietta Howard, her woman of the bedchamber, who explained that Caroline loved to see odd persons and, having sent for a wild boy from Germany, had curiosity to meet a wild Dean from Ireland.”

Baby robe belonging to George, prince of Wales, 1652.

In another resonant lesson for today, the exhibition suggests that these three princesses were particularly attuned to not self-indulge, but to be part of and do good in the world. They all supported the Foundling Hospital, among other charities promoting health and social welfare — a reflection of their progressive interest in new styles of child-rearing and empathy for the disenfranchised. The exhibit makes this point through drawings and prints of the hospital, along with tokens left by impoverished mothers consigning their children to the facility, all cheek by jowl with a silk satin baby robe belonging to George, prince of Wales (later George IV), the eldest child of George III and Queen Charlotte.

Foundling token.

The show is particularly strong at showing how the princesses’ interests in science — particularly in botany, leading to what became the famous gardens at Kew — also had political dimensions.

The gallery called Political Gardening” features images of the plants and products brought back from Britain’s sprawling empire, including America, India, and Africa.

The princesses’ interest in their royal gardens also included attracting animals from the far-flung colonies. In 1762, the governor of the British colony of South Africa sent Queen Charlotte — presumably they were to her and not to George III — two zebras. Unfortunately one died in route, but the other arrived and became a national sensation, as well as the official stuffed animal of the YCBA exhibition.

George Stubbs

“Zebra,” oil on canvas, 1763.

In the famous 1762 oil painting by George Stubbs, although the artist has placed the striped creature in a green jungle-esque setting, you just know that it knows it’s no longer in Africa, but England. There’s no place to bolt to. Though its slight glance the viewer’s way also tells you the zebra knows it’s a celebrity now, too.

Henry Howard, in a broadside etching from 1762, certainly knew what to do with the new arrival. He called the strange creature, which looked like a striped donkey, that other name for a donkey, and had some fun with it, courtesy of the royals.

He penned and published The Queen’s Ass: A New Humorous Allegorical Song,” which I gleefully transcribe:

A sight such as this surely never was seen.
Who the deuce would not gaze at the A____ of a Q____
What prospect so charming, what scene can surpass
The delicate sight of her M_____’s A____ 

No word in the exhibition if the dashes saved Howard from the libel laws of the time.

Enlightened Princesses,” which stays at the YCBA through April 30, is accompanied by a lush, count-em, 571-page scholarly catalogue. Admission to the museum is free. Click here for hours and more information.

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