2014 marks the 300th anniversary of the Personal Union, which brought Great Britain and the Electorate (and later Kingdom) of Hanover under the rule of a single monarch. The state of Lower Saxony is showing five exhibitions to celebrate the anniversary of the Elector of Hanover’s ascension to the throne of Great Britain in 1714 as George I, commencing 123 years of Hanoverian rule, which would end only with the death of William IV in 1837. All five exhibitions, under the patronage of the Prince of Wales, continue until 5 October 2014. The German-speaking countries have developed something of a speciality in organising massive exhibitions devoted to historical themes, accompanied by equally massive catalogues. It is to be hoped that the five current exhibitions mounted in Lower Saxony will attract many English-speaking historians of the eighteenth century who will benefit from direct contact with the exhibits and their bilingual labelling, but in the longer term it is the set of catalogues which will live on, preserving the basic sources of information contained in such exhibitions and the extensive research behind them. Consequently, the reviewer has the task of reviewing both the exhibitions and the catalogues when the latter are designed to be read outside the displays and are structured accordingly.
As the major central exhibition of the series, mounted in the Niedersächsisches Landesmuseum, Hanover, The Hanoverians on Britain’s Throne 1714-1837 provides an overview of the whole period of the Personal Union. The period leading up to 1714 is displayed in the Residenzmuseum at Celle by means of the exhibition Ready for the Island: The House of Brunswick-Lüneburg on the Path to London. Supplementary is the exhibition The Hanoverians on Britain’s throne 1714-1837, displayed in the recently rebuilt Herrenhausen Palace outside central Hanover, and the main catalogue covers both the exhibition in the Landesmuseum and that at Herrenhausen. The exhibition at Celle has its own catalogue, available in German only. Closely linked to these three exhibitions are One Coach and Two Kingdoms: Hanover and Great Britain 1814-1837, mounted in the Historisches Museum Hannover and focusing on the royal state coach built in London in 1782 and brought to Hanover in 1814, and Royal Theatre. British Caricatures from the Time of the Personal Union and the Present Day, assembled in the Wilhelm Busch Museum in Hanover. These have separate catalogues and are not reviewed here.
At the Landesmuseum the doors at the entrance to the exhibition are painted with the White Horse of Hanover followed by a set of sliding doors covered with the Union Jack, which sets up the colouristic scheme for the exhibition that follows. Explanation panels, in German and English, have a white background, while a red background is used as the identifying colour for objects aligned with the Hanoverian story and blue for the English. Likewise, the showcases are also painted either red or blue. The exhibits are broadly arranged in chronological sequence, with thematic groups, and within the exhibition proper this makes both the interconnections and the distinctions between the many topics encountered during the reigns of five monarchs more comprehensible. The catalogue entries are arranged in a different order.
Queen Anne had no direct heir and the English Parliament, in order to secure the Protestant succession, decided that the crown would pass to Sophia of Hanover, the daughter of Elizabeth Stuart, and granddaughter of James I. On view amongst the many documents and commemorative medals is the ‘Ornate Document on the Confirmation of the Act of Settlement, 28 June 1701’, and the ‘Ornate Document of the Confirmation of the Act of Naturalization of the most Excellent Princess Sophia, Electress and Dowager Duchess of Hanover, 11 April 1706’, which made Sophia a British citizen along with all her descendants so long as they remained Protestants (suspended 1948). The exhibition opens with a portrait of her husband, Duke Ernst August of Brunswick-Lüneburg, by Jakob Ferdinand Voet, c. 1670, who in 1692 was invested by the Emperor Leopold I as an Elector of the Holy Roman Empire, here commemorated with a silver medal designed by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716). The reverse has the Brunswick-Lüneburg coat of arms and the Saxon Steed is included for the first time, crowned with the Elector’s hat and framed with the Elector’s mantle. The rearing ‘Saxon Steed’ (the white horse seen at the entrance of the exhibition) had been the Guelf heraldic animal since the late fifteenth century and from 1714 became a very conspicuous element of the British royal coat of arms, symbolising the House of Hanover.
Leibniz, represented here in a portrait by Bernard Christoph Franke (c. 1660/70-1729), undertook, as a close advisor to the Hanoverian Court, to write a history of the Guelfs, published unfinished as Scriptores rerum Brunsvicensium […] (Hanover, 1707), to bolster Ernst August’s claim to Electoral Privileges. The Electress Sophia, shown in a portrait by Friedrich Wilhelm Weidemann (1668-1750), set about, with her husband, designing the gardens at their summer palace of Herrenhausen, in emulation of Versailles, and commissioned Leibniz to study the problem of the inadequate water supply for the water displays and fountains. He recommended the use of pressure pumps and his illustrated designs, displayed here, were to be realised twenty years later by the British amateur architect William Benson. Included in the display is Leibniz’s foldable travelling chair, with its leather coverings decorated with exotic birds and fruits.
Queen Anne died in 1714, the Electress Sophia having predeceased her by a few months. A silver medal from the same year commemorating the accession of Elector George Louis of Hanover as King George I of Great Britain and Ireland, by Georg Wilhelm Vestner (1677-1740), shows the springing steed jumping over the English Channel, anchoring the two territories with its hooves, and thereby symbolising the Personal Union. It asserts (translated from the Latin), ‘A worthy man is coming to the Britons who live in their own world’, and below, ‘one world alone is not enough’. Documents and commemorative medals further chart George I’s arrival in England. They include two works on paper by Sir James Thornhill connected to the murals (which were completed in collaboration with his assistant Dietrich André) celebrating the reign of George I in the Royal Hospital, Greenwich, displayed together with a copy of Sir Godfrey Kneller’s State Portrait of the King in his Coronation Robes, with Westminster Abbey in the background. One of the less familiar objects on view is the carcase of the new crown of state designed for George I, which he wore on leaving Westminster Abbey after his coronation and during the return procession to Westminster Hall. With slight modifications it was worn by all the Hanoverian monarchs until it was replaced by Queen Victoria with a lighter crown incorporating many of the original stones. George I was actually crowned, according to the royal herald Hawkins, with the consecrated St Edward’s Crown of Charles II, by Thomas Tenison, Archbishop of Canterbury, a strong supporter of the Hanoverian succession and represented here in a portrait by Simon Dubois (1632-1706).
Amongst impressive examples of commissions by George I are the large silver gilt altar candlesticks engraved with his ‘GR’ monogram, made by Benjamin Pyne, for the Chapel Royal, London (1717/18), and a sumptuous ‘minute sundial’ by George Rowley (1697-1727), produced in London for the Herrenhausen gardens. This can be read precisely to the minute and is also engraved with the monogram GR, flanked by the Lion and the Unicorn. George I left his grandson Frederick Louis (1707-1751) to be the official representative of the Electoral family resident in Hanover – here shown at the age of nine in a portrait from 1716 by René Auguste Constantyn (active 1712-26) – with Ernst August, Duke of Albany (1674-1728), the king’s youngest brother, as regent. In London George raised his faithful Turkish servant Mehmet, baptised as Ludwig Maximilian, into the inheritable noble estate of the Holy Roman Empire as ‘von Königstreu’, and he and his wife Marie Hedwig are depicted in portraits painted in 1714 by Kneller. The German Chancellery began operations in two rooms in St James’s Palace and the King was consulted on the majority of decisions to be implemented in Hanover. Couriers took four days each way, and an example of a dispatch of the German Chancellery shown here concerns a decision about cloth samples for uniforms which are attached to the letter. Although French was the language of the court, this period saw the development of dictionaries in various languages, as demonstrated by a number of examples on display, including that by Samuel Johnson, A dictionary of the English language […] (London, 1755), which was to be the basis for Johann Christoph Adelung’s Neues grammatisch-kritisches Wörterbuch der Englischen Sprache für die Deutschen […](Leipzig, 1783).
A mezzotint group portrait of His most sacred Majesty King George, their Royal Highness’s [sic] the Prince and Princess of Wales &c (1720-30) by John Simon shows its protagonists, all wearing robes of state, in apparent harmony, notwithstanding the quarrel between father and son which led in 1717 to the latter’s banishment from St James’s Palace. Opposition to the Hanoverians manifested itself immediately after George I came to throne, with the sympathisers of the Jacobites staging an unsuccessful uprising in 1715, followed by a renewed attempt in 1722. Prince James Francis Edward Stuart is represented in a portrait by E. Gill (1727/8), and one of the 1722 conspirators, Francis Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester, in a miniature by Kneller (1718). Likewise, the satirist Jonathan Swift, who wrote scathing attacks on Sir Robert Walpole and the House of Hanover, and is famous for his publication of Gulliver’s Travels (London, 1726), appears in the exhibition, as portrayed in an oil painting by Charles Jervas (c. 1718). Here a copy of Gulliver’s Travels is displayed alongside William Hogarth’s famous etching The Punishment inflicted on Lemuel Gulliver (1726), showing Gulliver’s punishment by the Lilliputians, who administer him an enema.
George I, and later George II, visited their hunting grounds in Hanover as often as possible, and a painting from 1725 depicts A Royal Hunting Party at Göhrde, with the three-storey hunting lodge in the background. In 1727 George I collapsed on one such journey to the Electorate and was brought to Osnabrück for medical attention. A pharmacist there endeavoured without success to revive him and as thanks for his efforts he was presented with the snuff box adorned with the king’s portrait which is exhibited here.
Full-length portraits (Charles Jervas workshop) of George II in British coronation robes and his wife Queen Caroline wearing a splendid gown covered with pearls and gemstones, her right hand resting on the British crown, mark George II’s succession to the thrones in 1727. The coronation is commemorated in a silver medal by Peter Paul Werner (1689-1771) and Queen Caroline is also represented in a miniature portrait c. 1732 (enamel on copper) by Christian Frederick Zinke (1683/5-1732). George Frederick Handel (1689-1760), who composed the anthem Zadok the Priest for the coronation, is represented in Philip Mercier’s portrait of 1730. Informally dressed and sitting at a table with a manuscript, he gazes out at the spectator, holding his quill pen in one hand, while his other arm rests on his harpsichord. Handel had been appointed Director of Music at the Hanoverian court in 1710 and came to London soon after 1714 to become one of the most successful composers in Great Britain. As well as having been teacher in Hanover to Caroline when Princess of Brandenburg-Ansbach, he taught her daughters, Princess Anne the Princess Royal and Princess Caroline, the last child of George II to be born at Herrenhausen. Music is well documented in the exhibition, including sound through headphones attached to the display, and Thomas Gainsborough’s delightful portrait of Johann Christian Bach (1776). The coronation was celebrated in Hanover and a print shows the Illumination of the Parnassus Fountain on the Neustadt Market (1727). London is represented, albeit at a later date, with paintings by Canaletto of Westminster Bridge with the Lord Mayor’s Procession on the Thames (1747), and The Grand Walk, Vauxhall Gardens, London (1751). St James’s Palace became the centre of elaborate ceremonies and is represented by a print showing St James’s Palace and parts adjacent (1736), by W. H. Toms (1700-1750) after Leonhard Knyff (1650-1722). Queen Caroline commissioned William Kent to build a library onto the eastern side of the palace, and this, although later demolished, is recorded here in a print from 1737 by Fournier.
George II’s eldest son Frederick Louis came to London in 1727, becoming Prince of Wales. Although there is limited information in the exhibition about him and his wife Princess Auguste von Sachsen-Gotha-Altenburg, they are represented in the famous print King George I and the Line of Succession (c. 1748) by Johann Sebastian Müller (c. 1715-1792), which affirms the succession of the Hanoverians on the English throne. In this print, the portraits of George II and Queen Caroline are placed on a pier beneath that of George I, and below them in turn are the Prince and Princess of Wales and their children. Above, flanking George I, is Britannia, accompanied by personifications of Freedom and War with Triumph and Justice, and a portrait of the Duke of Cumberland. The inscription reads, ‘To all true Britons, Lovers of Liberty, and the Present Succession’.
George II placed significantly more value on public display and rich furnishings than his father, possibly spurred on by developments in Berlin and Dresden, and commissioned from William Kent designs for silver candlesticks and five chandeliers for the Leine Palace in Hanover, and one of the latter is displayed here in an engraving by John Vardy. They were made in Hanover by the court goldsmith Balthasar Friedrich Behrens and show the Guelf Steed at the centre and below the royal crown, which is held up by putti (one of these chandeliers was recently exhibited in William Kent, Designing Georgian Britain at the Victoria & Albert Museum). A highlight of the exhibition are the five pieces of silver furniture originally commissioned by Maximilian Wilhelm, the younger brother of George I, which were purchased after his death in 1731 by George II and today belong to HRH Ernst August, Hereditary Prince of Hanover, Duke of Brunswick and Lüneburg. The sumptuous silver table made by Johann Ludwig II Biller (c. 1726) shows the Guelf Steed emerging below the Lüneburg lion and the Brunswick leopard and bearing a coat of arms. During the Napoleonic Wars this furniture was secretly brought for safety to Britain via St Petersburg and can be seen later displayed in watercolours by Charles Wild (1781-1835) of the Queen’s Drawing Room (1816), and the Queen’s Ballroom (1817), at Windsor Castle. During the 1730s George II decided to establish a university in the Electorate and commissioned Gerlach Adolf Freiherr von Munchausen, seen here in an anonymous portrait, with its planning and implementation. The Georg-August University was founded at Göttingen in 1737 and the document of ‘The Royal Establishment of Privileges of the Göttingen University, 7 December 1736’ is on view although the king himself did not visit it until 1748, an event recorded in an engraving by George Daniel Heumann (1691-1759).
George II travelled to Hanover every two to four years and would review his troops. Due to the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-48) the threat from France had resurfaced, but the anonymous painting Manoeuvre of Hanover Troops at Nienburg (Weser) (c. 1741) shows how these occasions were also social events when the king would visit his mistress Amalie Sophie Marianne von Wallmoden, here depicted in an anonymous portrait, and by whom he had a son. After the death of Queen Caroline in 1737 she moved to London and, in 1740, was given the title of Countess of Yarmouth. As Commander-in-Chief George II personally led his troops in the Battle of Dettingen on 27 June 1743, recorded in the superb painting by John Wootton (1682-1765), lent by the National Army Museum. George II sits confidently astride his white horse, accompanied by the Duke of Cumberland and Robert, 4th Earl of Holderness. Commemorative medals issued to mark George II’s victorious participation contributed to his fame and raised his popularity in Britain. While British and Hanoverian troops were engaged in the War of the Austrian Succession, Charles Edward Stuart, ‘The Young Pretender’, tried to use the opportunity to regain the British throne. The final chapter was reached in 1746 at the Battle of Culloden, where he was defeated by troops loyal to the king under the command of the Duke of Cumberland. Amongst the commemorative memorabilia is a remarkable porcelain punch bowl of Chinese export ware with portrait medallions of the Duke of Cumberland and scenes of the battle.
Perhaps fittingly in light of the Guelf heraldic device of the steed, an important section of the exhibition is devoted to horses. George II founded a royal stud farm in Celle in 1735, which meant that horses for the military no longer had to be imported from England or elsewhere and they played an increasing role in court culture. In 1778 the School of Horse Medicine was founded in Hanover under Johann Adam Kersting (1727-1784). Amongst the exhibits on display in this section are The History and Art of Horsemanship (London, 1771) by Richard Berenger, who held the office of Gentleman of the Horse at the English Royal Court (1760-82). The volume opens with an engraving of the springing Guelf steed and the motto of the house, Nec Aspera terrent (‘Adversities do not dismay’), accompanying the dedication to the king. Not surprisingly, George Stubbs (1724-1806) also features with his painting of Soldiers of the 10th Light Dragoons (1793), lent from the Royal Collection, and his finished study for The Ninth Anatomical Table of the Muscles […] of the Horse (1756-8).
George II died in 1760 and was succeeded by his grandson George III, depicted in coronation robes in one of a number of copies after Allan Ramsay’s famous portrait (1761). His marriage to Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, which took place in 1761 in the Chapel Royal of St James’s Palace, is recorded in sketch by Sir Joshua Reynolds. A new state coach designed by Sir William Chambers (1723-1796) and G. B. Cipriani (1727-1785) was intended for the coronation, but was not finished in time, and subsequently conveyed George III to the opening of parliament in 1762, as is recorded in a painting of the procession past Whitehall attributed to Wootton. It is still used as a state coach today. One of the more striking objects on display is the bag for the Great Seal of George III, heavily embroidered with the British royal coat of arms and with that of the Electorate of Hanover in pretence. However, the connections between Britain and the Electorate were to change since, unlike his grandfather, George III never set foot in Hanover, and he was also eventually to see it occupied by Napoleon.
One of the most arresting portraits in the exhibition is that of Queen Charlotte with her two eldest sons, George and Frederick August, c. 1764-9, by Ramsay and lent from the Royal Collection. She holds the youngest child on her knee, her arm resting on a spinet on which lies a copy of John Locke’s book Some thoughts Concerning Education (1693), with a sewing basket perched above it. Propped against the spinet is a drawing board and behind Charlotte’s gown lies a drum. Little George stands beside his mother holding a child’s bow and clutching arrows behind his back. Although the overall design is that of a traditional state portrait, it introduces us to a new world of careful informality which is admirably represented in the exhibition. This includes the particular interests of the king, interests demonstrated in his essay on agriculture advocating the improvement of meadow surfaces as well as crop rotation, but which also gave rise to the nickname ‘Farmer Giles’ and provided material for numerous cartoons. Richard Newton’s coloured etching The Thieves detected at last: or, a Wonderful discovery at the Windsor Farm!! (1792), shows the king and queen in milking attire, he carrying a stool and she a pail, as they approach the back side of a cow where geese are sucking its udders. George III was far from a one-dimensional figure, however, and a total contrast is provided by the major display of the splendid silver service he commissioned in the 1770s for the Elector’s court in Hanover from the Parisian goldsmith Robert-Joseph Auguste (1725-1805). It was copied and doubled in size by the Hanoverian Court goldsmith Bunsen, and with the exception of the Banquet Centrepiece (1799; Historisches Museum, Hannover) added by Ignaz Würth, is lent to the exhibition by the Rothschild Family Trust.
No such conspicuous consumption by the sovereign was encouraged in England and George III’s collecting activity and patronage of the arts took other forms. The foundation of the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 1768 is commemorated with a Study of the Figures in the Foreground of the Engraving ‘the Exhibition of the Royal Academy’ (1787) by Johann Heinrich Ramberg (1763-1840), which was reproduced on very luxurious fans. Ramberg was a Hanoverian, who, on presentation to George III in 1780 of an album of picturesque views of the Harz Mountains, received a stipend to go to the Royal Academy and remained in London for nine years before later being appointed court painter in Hanover. His portrait from 1790 of Louise Sophie Jeanette von Oeynhausen (future wife of the Hanoverian Secret Legation Councillor, Georg Ernst Carl Freiherr Grote) shows how fully he adopted the English portrait style prevalent during the presidency of Sir Joshua Reynolds. The luxury trades that flourished in Britain under the relative stability of George III’s rule are well represented in this exhibition, for example by an anonymous painting of A Cabinet Maker’s Office (c. 1770), and by Thomas Chippendale’s seminal publication The gentleman and cabinet-maker’s director: being a large collection of the most elegant and useful designs of household furniture in the Gothic, Chinese and Modern taste (London, 1755), which enjoyed immense success and established the English Rococo and the fame of ‘Chippendale’ furniture Europe-wide. Likewise the example of an elegant ‘Precision Hall Clock’ (before 1797) by Vuillamy & Son, London, highly prized both on technical grounds and as an exquisite object of art, and lent by HRH Ernst August, Hereditary Prince of Hanover, Duke of Brunswick and Lüneburg. Also displayed are The works in architecture of Robert and James Adam […]containing part of the designs of Sion House[…] (London, 1773), which, lent as this copy is from the Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, Göttingen, illustrates the penetration of British Classicism into Central Europe. One charming curiosity is the watercolour of a Porcelain Painter in the Painting Hall of Thomas Baxter (1810) by Thomas Baxter Junior, shown alongside a Coalport porcelain ‘Ornamental plate for the commemoration of Lord Nelson (Lady Hamilton as Britannia)’ (1806) by Baxter. Lady Hamilton appears here as Britannia unveiling a bust of Nelson and lamenting his death in the Battle of Trafalgar, 1805, and this same plate appears in the foreground on the bench in the watercolour of Baxter’s painting studio.
The travels and explorations which Captain Cook undertook for the Royal Society between 1768 and 1780 are documented on the General Map of all Discoveries (1798) published by the Viennese cartographer Franz Anton Schraembl. Johann Reinhold Forster (1729-1798; a Prussian of Scottish ancestry who lived in Britain), and his son Georg (1754-1794) accompanied Cook on his second voyage to the South Seas and are here depicted by John Francis Rigaud (1742-1810) on Tahiti drawing a bird which was to become the frontispiece for Georg Forster’s description of Cook’s third voyage. Also exhibited are a number of watercolours by Georg Forster, including a Leptailuras serval (Serval Cat), Dipus capensis (Spring Hare) and Forstera sedifolia (a plant indigenous to New Zealand and Australia), selected from about 600 mostly coloured and carefully classified drawings executed by him of the flora and fauna in the regions explored. The Forstera sedifolia’s sibling genus, Phyllachne, was included in Johann Reinhold’s Characteres Generum Plantarum (1776) and translated by Georg into German in 1779. After Johann Reinhold’s death, George III approved the purchase in 1799 of his South Seas material for Göttingen University to supplement the already existing Cook collection assembled there. Another central figure in the British-German cultural exchange featured in the exhibition (in a watercolour from 1780 by Johann Strecker) is the Göttingen mathematician Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, one of four Göttingen professors to be elected Members of the Royal Society during the Personal Union.
The spirit of the Enlightenment is perhaps personified in the exhibition in the figure of Frederick William Herschel (1738-1822), who emigrated to London from Hanover. At first he earned his living as an organist and music teacher, as is seen from a 1778 poster advertising a ‘Performance of the Messiah in a Benefit Concert for Frederick William Herschel’in Bath at which Herschel conducted and his sister Caroline took part as a soprano. He was, however, soon able to pursue his astronomical interests, making important discoveries, most notable of which, in 1781, was the planet he named ‘Georgium Sidus’, what is now Uranus. He was appointed Astronomer Royal, with his sister Caroline, the first female professional astronomer, as his assistant. He was knighted in 1816 and appointed President of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1820. Here he is shown holding a drawing of the planet Uranus in a pastel portrait (1794) by his friend John Russell (1745-1806). Herschel manufactured astronomical instruments and telescopes such as the ‘Reflecting Telescope’ (c. 1785), here displayed and which George III donated to the University of Göttingen.
Throughout the eighteenth century Great Britain continued to open up new markets in the East through the British East India Company, founded in 1600. On view are two rare golden letters, the first the ‘Golden Letter to King George II of Great Britain’ (7 May 1756) sent from the Burmese King Alaungphaya concerning the significance of founding a trading colony in his realm. Made from a sheet of pure gold decorated with 24 rubies and kept in a box made from the hollow tusk of an elephant, it was sent on to Hanover and is displayed alongside the ‘Golden Letter to King George III of Great Britain’ (15 April 1764), from the Nawab of Arcot, ruler in the Karnatik region of India, giving thanks for British support for the consolidation of his rule. Hanoverian troops were deployed in India in 1782-84, as witnessed by a diary on display, which was probably written by one Lieutenant Carl Breymann of the Hanoverian infantry. In 1775 thirteen North American colonies successfully rose against the British colonial power whose army included 12,000 Hessian troops and reinforcements from Brunswick. On view is the first German-language printing of the American Declaration of Independence of 4 July 1776, which was published one day after the English-language proclamation. After the French, under Napoleon, occupied Hanover in 1803 the King’s Royal German Legion was created from veterans of the Hanover army, and they were to fight against the French up until the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo. Their commander was Adolf Friedrich, Duke of Cambridge, seventh son of George III and portrayed here by an unknown artist c. 1810 wearing the breast star of the Order of the Garter.
Many caricatures were produced during the Napoleonic Wars by James Gillray (1756-1815), such as Germans Eating Sour-Krout (1803), where five gluttonous men sit before mountains of sauerkraut and sausages, an image similar to that on the wall behind them of pigs feeding. In The Plumb-pudding in Danger: or State Epicures Taking un Petit Souper (1805), the British Prime Minister, William Pitt the Younger, and Napoleon re-make the globe, here presented as a plum pudding. Napoleon cuts off almost all of central Europe while the Briton secures the oceans of the world with his trident fork. A medal commemorating the establishment of the Kingdom of Westphalia (1807) by Bertrand Andrieu (1761-1822), shows Napoleon represented as a naked figure with a laurel wreath in the tradition of Alexander the Great. Just as Alexander bridled the stallion Bucephalus, Napoleon holds the otherwise ‘unrestrained’ ancien régime, which takes the form of the rearing Guelf Steed. Napoleon installed his youngest brother Jérôme as ruler of the Kingdom of Westphalia, and the bisque porcelain busts (c. 1810) of him and his wife Katharina by Karl Heinrich Schwarzkopf (1763-1846) of the Fürstenberg manufactory, raised to the position of Manufacture Royale, are on display,The constitution of the Kingdom of Westphalia (Braunschweig, 1807) was a building block of the modern constitutional German state, declaring in Article 10 ‘equality of all subjects before the law and free practice of divine services of the various religious societies’, and was followed in 1808 by the introduction of the French Code Civil. Examples of both are on display.
King George in Old Age, Windsor, 1809 by Graf Ernst Friedrich Herbert von Münster (1766-1839), shows George III as a fragile old man without a wig but wearing the breast star of the Order of the Garter on his coat. In 1814 the Prince Regent commemorated the 100-year Jubilee of the Personal Union. George Cruikshank (1792-1878) makes fun of the planned celebrations in his caricature The Modern Don Quixote or, the Fire King, 1814. The Regent, described as a ‘The modern Don Quixote’ sits on a rocking-horse, blindfolded. Below him are two barrels with blazing gun powder, alluding to the controversy that lasted several weeks concerning a complex pyrotechnical stage show. After the definitive defeat of Napoleon in 1815, the Congress of Vienna – here represented by a print by Jean Godfroy (1771-1839) after Jean-Baptiste Isabey – gathered together delegates from almost all the European powers to restructure the continent. The interests of Hanover were represented by the same Graf Ernst Friedrich Herbert von Münster who had portrayed King George in 1809, in turn portrayed here by Eduard Peter Ströhling wearing the Great Cross of the Guelf Order, founded in 1815 by the Prince Regent. The Electorate of Hanover was raised to a Kingdom and its territories considerably enlarged. The Perspective View of the Leinestrasse in Hanover, pen and ink, 1830, by Georges Ludwig Friedrich Laves (1788-1864) illustrates his design for the re-modelling of the Leineschloss. This featured a central portico with six Corinthian columns supporting a pediment enclosing the coat of arms of the Kingdom of Hanover, and was modelled on the North Front of Carlton House (here represented in an etching by Richard Reeve after William Westall), which Laves would have seen on his visit to London in 1816.
George III died in 1820 and his son George IV is represented in a sumptuous idealised portrait by an unknown artist (after 1821) though based on the earlier portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence (1816). He is shown wearing the robes of the Order of The Garter and a herald’s tabard designed for his coronation procession in July 1821, which elaborately combines the elements of the coats of arms of Great Britain and the Electorate of Hanover. George IV was the first British sovereign in 66 years to visit his ancestral lands and the city of Hanover. The Authentische und vollständige Beschreibung aller Feyerlichkeiten […] bey derAnwesenheit Seiner Königl. Majestät Georgs Des Vierten […] (‘Authentic and complete description of all the festivities […] during the presence of HRH George IV […]’; Hanover, 1822), on display, describes the celebrations staged on the occasion of this visit. One of the highlights was a great firework display held at Herrenhausen, illustrated here in a lithograph by Hans Dittmer (1777-1829). Laves’ Façade des Königlichen schlosses zu Herrenhausen und Entwurf wie solche verschönert werden kann (‘Façade of the royal palace at Herrenhausen and plan for how it can be improved’; 1818) shows his design for the severely classical remodelling of the façade of the summer palace completed in 1820/21. In London, as Prince Regent, George IV had commissioned from John Nash a far-reaching urban planning design as seen in Rudolf Ackermann’s Panoramic View round Regents Park (1831). The ambitious plan, begun in 1818, included a park and grounds for a summer palace, as well as distinguished town houses, but only a partial rebuilding of the park with terraces was achieved. Nash was also responsible for planning a great thoroughfare between Regent’s Park and the centre of London for both ceremonial purposes and shopping, and which included St George’s Chapel, Regent Street, as seen in the exhibition in an engraving by Thomas Hosmer Shepherd (1791-1864).
As Prince Regent in 1795 George had entered into an unhappy dynastic marriage with his cousin Caroline von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel, represented here in a miniature (1810) by Louis Marie Autissier (1772-1830) wearing a splendid hat adorned with feathers reminiscent of the coat of arms of the Prince of Wales. After the birth of their daughter in 1796 they lived permanently apart and George repeatedly tried to formally terminate the marriage. Princess Charlotte, their daughter, seen here in a marble bust (c. 1815) by Joseph Nollekens (1737-1823) was second in line of succession, but, following her marriage to Prince Leopold of Sachsen-Coburg-Saalfeld, died in childbirth (1817) at the age of 21. In 1830, William, the third son of George III, married Adelaide von Sachsen-Meiningen and, aged 64, succeeded his brother George IV to the throne. The coronation of King William IV and Queen Adelaide, as documented in a coloured aquatint by Robert I Havell (1769-1832), was a much more modest affair than that of his brother. Design for a Regency, 1830, a coloured etching by William Heath (1794-1840), points to the succession already being discussed with Victoria, the daughter of William’s deceased brother Edward, Duke of Kent, as heir to the throne. The caricature shows the eleven-year-old Victoria, with much too large a crown on her head, seated on the lap of her uncle, Leopold von Sachsen-Coburg-Gotha, while her mother, the Duchess of Kent, makes herself comfortable on the throne.
When William IV died in 1837, Victoria, his niece, succeeded as Queen of Great Britain but was barred from the crown Hanover by Salic law, which excluded female succession. Consequently, William’s younger brother, Ernst August, aged 66, was proclaimed King of Hanover. The end of the Personal Union was marked by a ‘Derisive Medal on the End of the Personal Union Hanover Sovereign,’ (1837). Here the obverse shows a profile of the young Victoria and the reverse Ernst August riding off with the inscription ‘TO HANOVER’, an allusion to the jumping steed on the 1714 medal commemorating the Personal Union, only of course in this case the rider and horse jump in the opposite direction.
The exhibition continues at the recently rebuilt Herrenhausen Palace Museum and, with displays relating to court life, brings together the story of the new Electorate of Hanover on the eve of the Personal Union. Also on view is a display devoted to the collection of Reichsgraf Johann Ludwig von Wallmoden-Gimborn (1736-1811). The illegitimate son of George II, he was born and grew up in England and went on the Grand Tour to Italy where he collected extensively. His collection was sold after his death and this is an opportunity to see some of it re-assembled.
Packed with information, this fascinating exhibition holds one’s attention throughout by virtue of the rich variety of material on view and the generally comprehensive labelling, though those using the English-language catalogue alone should be alerted to the many errors of translation and misuse of technical terms. Nonetheless, the exhibition very successfully brings out the many links between Hanover and Great Britain, especially during the eighteenth century. After the Napoleonic Wars the gulf between the two domains steadily widens and this becomes clearer as the objects on display become fewer. For the British visitor there is much to learn and it does seem a pity that so few are destined to see it, not least because the concurrent exhibition The First Georgians, Art & Monarchy 1714-1760 in the Queen’s Gallery, London, until 12 October (see the Criticks review by Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly), like that devoted to George III & Queen Charlotte: Patronage, Collecting and Court Taste in 2004, has adopted a significantly different approach.
The Lower Saxony State Exhibition 2014, Als die Royals aus Hannover kamen | The Hanoverians on Britain’s Throne 1714-1837, runs from 15 May to 5 October 2014.