James McArdell.

Charlotte Queen of Great Britain.

19 x 25 inches

A mezzotint portrait of the new queen by James McArdell published in London in 1761, the year of her marriage to King George. Charlotte was reputed to be a plain and unintelligent girl with whom the king lived soberly and faithfully and by whom he fathered a formidable army of children. James McArdell was born in Dublin around the year 1729 and started work as a pupil of John Brooks with whom he came to London at the end of the 1740's. Soon after this he started to work on his own and set himself up as an engraver at the sign of the Golden Head in Covent Garden. It was from this address that he produced most of his work and published the majority of his prints. He specialised in mezzotint engravings after his contemporaries and the old master painters. He died, a relatively young man, in 1765 and was interred at Hampstead churchyard.