Princess Charlotte (1766-1828) was the eldest daughter and fourth child of George III (1738–1820) and Queen Charlotte (1744–1818). Like her sisters, Charlotte led a sheltered early life at Windsor Castle. She became a competent amateur artist and may have been taught by Thomas Gainsborough in 1786-7. The King was very attached to his daughters and reluctant to let them marry and leave home. Princess Charlotte was the first of the sisters to marry. In 1797, aged 31, she became the wife of Prince Friedrich of Württemberg (1754–1816), a 42-year-old widower. When he died in 1816, Charlotte remained in Württemberg where she died in 1828.

Here Princess Charlotte is depicted aged two years and four months. She is surrounded not by toys but by traditional elements in adult portraiture – she is sitting on a marble step with a Persian carpet on the left and an ancient urn on the right. The flowers (passion flowers and roses) in the portrait may be intended to represent the blossoming of a young life. The artist himself was not happy with the result, and asked the Queen if he could paint another miniature of the Princess ('only the Head finished upon a very thick square piece of Ivory'), but the location of this is unknown.

Ozias Humphry (1742-1810) was born in Devonshire, moved to Bath where he had rooms in the house of Thomas Linley, the musician, and then went to London where, in 1764, Sir Joshua Reynolds persuaded him to settle. Humphry spent a brief period in India (1785-7), exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1779 to 1797 and became a Royal Academician in 1791. His sight began to fail in 1792 when he turned to drawing in oil and pastel. He became blind in about 1797-8.

This miniature, painted two years after Humphry's move to London, shows the influence of Reynolds, giving the little sitter great dignity by means of her pose. It is possible Reynolds may have suggested Humphry's name to the Queen, whose portrait Humphry also painted in 1766 (RCIN 420965). The portrait of the Princess was an immediate success and may have been the one the artist exhibited at the Society of Arts in 1769, and it may have been bought from the exhibition by Charlotte's father, George III.

Signed on the plinth OH [monogram] and inscribed by the artist on the original backing card in ink: Ozias Humphry pixt. / Jan. 1769 – / Princess Royal / of England / bo : Sep : 29th 1766.

Catalogue entry adapted from Masterpieces in Little: Portrait Miniatures from the Collection of Her Majesty The Queen (1992) and George III and Queen Charlotte: Patronage, Collecting and Court Taste (2004).