Lot 129: Mrs Anne Mee (née Foldsone) (British c.1770/5-1851)

A Princess, probably Princess Charlotte Augusta (1796-1817), wearing black and white dress with laced bodice and slashed sleeves, gold armbands set with cornelians, a pale yellow glove on her left hand, her right arm leaning on a volume entitled Beethoven, the background with column, red curtain and landscape in the distance
signed with initials and indistinctly dated on the obverse, AF/ 1814, shaped red velvet frame with gilt-metal inner border surmounted by a Royal crown
Rectangular, 115mm. (4 1/2ins.) high

Anne Mee obtained the patronage of George IV, when Prince of Wales, in 1790/91. From that date, she visited Windsor on frequent occasions and painted the daughters of George III as well as Charlotte, daughter of the Prince Regent (see Richard Walker, Miniatures in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen, the Eighteenth and early Nineteenth Centuries, 1992).
The fact that this portrait is indistinctly dated makes it difficult to assertain with any certainty which Princess is portrayed. If dated 1804, the year that Mee may have married and therefore explaining the initials of her maiden name, then the sitter is too old to be Princess Charlotte (she would have been 10 years old at that date). If dated 1804, the sitter may be Princess Sophia, who would have been thirty-four years old at the time. The puffed sleeves of the dress certainly indicate the fashion of circa 1814 and it may be that Anne Mee continued to use her maiden name for certain commissions. Mee certainly painted the young Charlotte many times, particularly around the time of her short-lived engagement to the Prince of Orange in 1814. Charlotte was also very musical. This may explain the volume entitled Beethoven, a favourite composer of her father's, shown under the sitter's arm in the present lot.