The Hanging of the Queen

Queen Charlotte was hung earlier this summer.

Actually, it was her official or “state portrait”, donated to the Museum by Peter Fischer, a member of Historic Shepherdstown Commission.

Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz became the wife of King George III in 1761.  News of the royal wedding and the queen’s coronation would have arrived in  Virginia by sailing ship with some delay, early in 1762.  Later that year – by an act of the colonial government in Williamsburg – Thomas Shepherd incorporated his town on the banks of the Potomac River and named it Mecklenburg, in honor of the new queen.

The portrait, a copy of a life-size painting by the Scottish artist Allan Ramsay, now displayed in London’s National Gallery, shows the queen in her exquisite coronation gown, her hand placed symbolically on the crown.

“Queen Charlotte”, Peter says, “became a kind of pet project of mine, when I started delving into Shepherdstown history.  I discovered, as it seemed to me, the largely forgotten fact that Thomas Shepherd had named his town in honor of Queen Charlotte and that, because of that fact, the good queen deserved at least honorable mention in Shepherdstown history.  And since a picture speaks louder than words, I thought that a visual reminder of who the queen was might be most appropriate.  That’s why I am both gratified and delighted that Queen Charlotte’s portrait is now hanging in our Museum.”

Peter is a former professor of Russian who taught at Amherst College and the University of Houston.  He also worked in Moscow from 1988 to 1996, initially at the American Embassy and subsequently for the Carnegie Endowment and the Institute for International Education, which administers the Fulbright Exchange Program.