The British have always enjoyed portraits. Portraits of themselves, their houses, their wives, their dogs and their children.
As early as the 1630s Van Dyck was producing portraits of Charles I's children as loveable, innocent creatures, though he subjected them to the established style of courtly representation. Gainsborough, 100 years later, set new standards: in keenly observed renditions of childlike behaviour, the children he painted developed a carefree presence, emphasized by dynamic loose brushwork - and landscape played an important part in placing the children in their own environment. Sir Joshua Reynolds and his successor Thomas Lawrence also adopted the motif of children in a landscape setting, making it popular throughout Europe. And European artists (like Angelika Kauffman) travelled to England to see the works and contributed to the wide dissemination of this 'modern' portrait type, which originated in Britain but was fast becoming popular abroad.
All over Europe, in the Age of Enlightenment - the second half of the eighteenth century - the interest in children's portraits was spreading through not only the royal and noble families, but more widely, generating also an interest in the moral concepts associated with the bourgeois family. Children began to be seen as independent characters, not just as future rulers, but also as childlike figures. It was a time when sensitively observed portraits of royal children gave no indication that the French Revolution would soon shatter their sheltered world.
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