She rode dressed in men’s clothing, was married to a mentally unstable king and fell in love with a revolutionary doctor: this was the Danish queen Caroline Matilda.
A princess of the House of Welf, she grew up in England during the personal union between the Electorate of Hanover and the British Crown and was sent to Denmark to marry. She spent time in London, Copenhagen and Celle. Her short life coincided with a period of social upheaval and was shaped by opportunities and the hope of change, but also by the pressure and expectations placed upon her as a result of her standing.
A love affair with the king’s personal physician, the reformer Johann Friedrich Struensee, proved her undoing. Together the pair had attempted a bold experiment: they had tried to instigate a quiet and non-violent revolution to turn Denmark from an absolutist monarchy into an enlightened state – but they had failed dramatically.
Struensee was executed in Copenhagen in 1772. Caroline Matilda went into exile at the former Welf residence in Celle, where she died on 10 May 1775 at just 23 years old.
Peder Als
Oil on canvas, 1770
On loan from a private collection
The Danish court painter Peder Als was commissioned to paint this portrait to mark the consecration of the flag in Traventhal on 20 July 1770. He was told that the painting should depict “a woman and a queen”.