Lot 1614 , Henry Dawe after George Dawe R.A., mezzotint, 'Prince Leopold of Saxe Coburg. K.G.C.B..., circa 1817, visible sheet 53 x 38cm

Henry Dawe after George Dawe R.A., mezzotint, 'Prince Leopold of Saxe Coburg. K.G.C.B..., circa 1817, visible sheet 53 x 38cm
£100-150
Prince Leopold (1790-1865) was the fourth son of the Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld. He entered the Russian army in 1808 and distinguished himself in the campaigns against Napoleon before Waterloo. He was the uncle of both Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. His first marriage in 1816 was to Princess Charlotte, Victoria’s cousin, who died in childbirth in 1817.

In 1830, Leopold accepted the invitation from the newly independent Belgians to be their king. He was very close to Queen Victoria, had supported the queen and her mother in the difficult days before her accession and, as he himself recorded, ‘looked very sharp after the poor little baby’ when her father, the Duke of Kent, died in 1820. He also played an important role in negotiating her marriage to Prince Albert, his nephew, and wrote in 1838 ‘it is my great anxiety to see Albert a very good and distinguished young man, and no pains will be thought too much on my part if this end can be attained’. To Victoria he wrote ‘I love you for yourself, and I love in you the dear child whose welfare I carefully watched.’

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