The waist-length portrait, contained in a tondo format, shows a young lady dressed in a spencer of a parade Dragoon uniform; she wears a decorative krakuska* cap and is set in front of a romantically tuned park. The polished facture suggests the Biedermeier period, and so do the hairstyle with fashionable spiral curls as well as vivid colours combined with dark hues. The signature is damaged and barely legible, the year can be read as 1837, possibly even 1857.
The picture shows Louise (1776–1810) of the family of North-German Counts of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, the queen consort of Prussia under king Frederick William III. She was outstandingly beautiful and belongs to the most frequently portrayed European noble ladies. There are also numerous posthumous images of her, including the one in the National Gallery of Slovenia, a work by painter Wilhelm Ternite (1786–1871). A portrait of 1810, likewise by Ternite, features her in an identical posture but wearing a spencer à la hussarde. Fashionable female riding habits of Regency period as well as later on were often modelled on military uniforms, but Louise’s Dragoon apparel also serves a documentary purpose, because in 1806 the King appointed her as honorary chief of the Prussian Army’s Dragoon Regiment No. 5. Among other items in the collection of the Queen’s clothes, also the spencer featuring in the present panting has been preserved. In addition, her death mask was also of great help to painters in the execution of her posthumous portraits.
The provenance of the portrait has not been identified yet, however it is possible that the painting arrived in Slovenia via family connections. Namely, Louise’s granddaughter of the same name, Louise of Mecklenburg-Schwerin (1824–1859), married in 1849 into the family of Princes of Windischgrätz and came to live in Carniola.
* Wladimierz Godlewski of Warsaw was kind enough to draw our attention to the name of the cap.
