Upon first glance, this painting depicts a little girl with blonde curls, big blue eyes and rosy cheeks in a white dress and brown sash, holding a chick on one hand and a bird cage in the other. The little girl in this painting is a young Princess Charlotte of Wales (not to be confused with the current Princess Charlotte of Wales, the daughter of the current Prince and Princess of Wales), the only child of George, Prince of Wales (later King George IV), and Caroline of Brunswick. Charlotte died at the age of twenty-one after giving birth to a stillborn son, predeceasing both her grandfather, King George III, and her father, similarly to Prince Albert Victor’s death before Queen Victoria and King Edward VII. Sir Thomas Lawrence, the painter, was considered to be the greatest portraitist of his time. Lawrence became the principal painter to George III, for whom this portrait was painted, after the death of Joshua Reynolds in 1792, when he started receiving occasional commissions from the Hanovers. In 1814, George III’s successor George IV employed Lawrence in earnest. A double portrait of the princess was painted in 1801, except with sheet music in her hand rather than a chick and bird cage.

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