Stroehling’s work in the Royal Collection allows us to trace a rare example of continuity between the masters of the Dutch Golden Age and those of the early nineteenth century. Stroehling was brought up in Dusseldorf where a magnificent collection of the polished, classicising and elegant works (often on copper) by artists such as Adriaen van der Werff (1659-1722) had been formed by Johann Wilhelm II, Elector Palatine (1658-1716). Stroehling worked all over Europe but spend much of the first two decades of the nineteenth century in London; between 1810 and 1820 he was even styled ‘Historical Painter to the Prince of Wales’. Stroehling’s work elsewhere tended to be life-sized portraiture, but the Royal Collection has an important group of small-scale portraits on copper, executed with fine detail and a glossy finish; Joseph Farington perceptively referred to them as ‘painted in a Vanderwerfe manner’. Stroehling’s price for these ‘Cabinet Pictures’ was 200 guineas each, an impressive sum in the period even for a life-sized work. This is one of a pair of German princesses, probably commissioned by George IV (OM 1102-3, 405046 and 404867): both are the same size and have sequential numbers in the Store of Carlton House in 1816. It is difficult to determine when this was painted; the accurate setting Berlin would suggest that that was where it was painted though such details can be obtained quite easily from other sources. The idea of the image is that the Queen is shown as Hebe, cup-bearer to Jupiter, which is why she is holding a jug and cup next to an eagle, the attribute of Jupiter, with a victor's laurel wreath in its beak. However this is also a Prussian eagle and in the background appears Berlin's Brandenburg Gate. This is a mythological pun, which invests Prussia with Jupiter's qualities of thunder and command, and Queen Louisa with Hebe's of service and youthful charm.