Charlotte, Princess Royal, the eldest daughter of George III and Queen Charlotte, was born in September 1766, following the births of Princes George, Frederick and William over the previous four years. The obvious pride of the young mother in her infant daughter is clear both from her pose and from the fact that in 1767 two copies of this portrait were commissioned: one in pastel for the Queen's Lady of the Bedchamber, the Countess (later Duchess) of Northumberland; and the second an enlargement in oil, still in the Royal Collection. Francis Cotes made his name as a painter of pastel portraits, and was technically unsurpassed. He frequently resorted to classical allusion and in this portrait Cotes was probably influenced by Annibale Carracci's 'Il Silenzio' , which had been bought for the King in Italy the previous year by the King's Librarian, Richard Dalton. The pose of the Madonna, who holds a protective arm around the Christ Child as she holds up a finger in order to silence the infant St John, is echoed by Queen Charlotte; however, as her gaze is directed out of the picture rather than towards the child, it is the spectator who is asked to be silent in order not to disturb the sleeping child. In his catalogue for the exhibition held at the Society of Artists in 1767, in which Cotes's pastel was included, Horace Walpole noted: 'The Queen, fine; the Child, incomparable. . . . The Sleeping Child is equal to Guido . . .' It is a measure of George III's fondness for this pastel that soon after its completion it hung in his bedchamber at Buckingham House; the Carracci painting hung in the adjoining Closet. In 1804 or 1805 Cotes's portrait was removed to Windsor, where in 1813 it hung in the King's Closet in the private apartments A founder-member of the Royal Academy, Francis Cotes made extensive use of pastels, which may explain the delicacy of handling in his oil paintings. His style was closer to that of Allan Ramsay than to that of Joshua Reynolds, and thus his paintings were more to the taste of the royal family. Signed and dated FCotes px.t / 1767 Catalogue entry adapted from George III & Queen Charlotte: Patronage, Collecting and Court Taste, London, 2004