John Chardin (d.1755) was the son of a Huguenot jeweller and famous traveller, and a close friend of Frederick, Prince of Wales. In 1720 he was created 1st Baronet of the Inner Temple by George I and according to the English Baronetage of 1741 ‘both father and son brought great riches into England’. Chardin organised hunting parties for the Prince on his estates at Kempton Park in Sunbury, Middlesex, and corresponded informally with Frederick and other members of his set, including Charles Calvert, Lord Baltimore (1699-1751) and Henry, Marquis of Carnarvon (1708-71), seeking positions for his relations. Chardin was distantly related to the sculptor, Henry Cheere, addressed in his letters as ‘my dear and worthy kinsman’, and it seems to have been through Chardin’s persuasive correspondence that Cheere was employed at Baltimore’s house, Woodcote Park, in Surrey, as well as receiving the commission for a monument to Carnarvon’s wife.

Frederick chose to acknowledge his friendship with Chardin with this highly personal gift, displaying not only the Prince of Wales’s badge but also a lock of his hair, and an engraved inscription from the Aeneid: Semper Honos Nomenque Tuum Laudesque Manebunt (Your honour, name and praise will endure forever).

Text adapted from The First Georgians: Art and Monarchy 1714 - 1760, London, 2014