Caroline, Princess of Wales, married the future George IV in 1795 but within a year the couple had separated and by 1800, when this portrait was begun, she had set up an alternative court at Montague House, Blackheath. Princess Caroline had taken lessons on the harp, an instrument highly regarded in court circles, and here - watched over by a shadowy bust of Minerva, patroness of the arts - she tunes her harp and prepares to play the music offered up by her daughter Princess Charlotte. Lawrence received the commission from Anne, Marchioness Townshend, Mistress of the Robes to the Princess, through his good friend John Julius Angerstein, a neighbour of the Princess at Blackheath. The painting was subsequently in the 1822 sale of Queen Caroline's possessions. In 1806 the conduct of artist and sitter while it was being painted was scrutinised during the Delicate Investigation. A commission of Cabinet ministers assessed the allegations that the Princess had had an adulterous affair with, amongst others, Lawrence. The Princess stated that Lawrence 'stayed a few nights, that by early rising, he might begin painting on the picture before the Princess Charlotte (who as her residence was at that time at Shooter's Hill, was enabled to come early) or myself came to sit'. The acrimonious relationship between the Prince and Princess dominated the Regency period, when society was led by the Prince of Wales and captured in the fashionable portraits by Lawrençe with their vivid colouring and sensuous handling of paint, which give dazzling surface effects. Typical of Lawrence is the dramatic juxtaposition of the figures against a distant landscape framed by a curtain and arch. Our low viewpoint together with the dominant vertical shape of the harp accentuate the height and therefore the elegance of the Princess. As in other large-scale portraits of this period, mother and daughter are spot-lit as in a theatre against the stormy sky to give a powerful romantic effect; strategic touches of red set off the imposing dark colours. Against this contrived setting is the engaging warmth between mother and daughter. They are caught in mid-action: Princess Charlotte's pose disrupts the stability of her mother's, her right shoe jutting out from the painting, its ribbon undone. In a preparatory drawing (private collection) Princess Caroline unpacks her harp, her pose reversed and without her daughter. The many pentimenti show Lawrence re-working his ideas on the canvas, possibly from this starting point. He may have extended the canvas on the right in order to accommodate the young Princess. Text taken from The Quest for Albion, London, 1998