Having begun life as a mezzotint engraver, George Dawe was much employed as a painter by Prince Leopold both during his marriage (1816-7) and after; he worked also for the Duke and Duchess of Kent. Like Lawrence he was at Aix-la-Chapelle to paint the crowned heads assembled there for the Congress in 1818. He spent the years 1818-28 working for the Emperor Alexander I in St Petersburg, creating 336 portraits of those responsible for the defeat of Napoleon, housed in a specially-created gallery in the Winter Palace (the equivalent of the Waterloo Chamber). He died soon after his return to England in 1829. This is a fine copy (perhaps by Dawe himself) of the full length length portrait of the Princess Charlotte by George Dawe in the Belgian Royal Collection, which hung at Claremont and was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1818. This version is a pair to the portrait of Prince Leopold, her husband (RCIN 406440)