Caroline Matilda

Painted by Nicolas Freese during the early 1800s, this young lady named Caroline Matilda Chichester wears a classically styled Regency dress with a high waistline, wide neckline and narrow sleeves with a small puff to the shoulder. Her unpowdered hair frames her face with soft curls and is decorated with a trailing veil in spotted lace. The portrait is presented in the original ornate giltwood frame (small losses).

Growing up in a small village in Somerset, Caroline Matilda was the third of seven daughters born to John Hody Chichester and his wife Charlotte Cowpland. As the girls entered their late teens, theirs must have been a busy household with so many daughters to find suitable husbands for. Caroline was 34 when she wed in 1818. Her husband was John Maber Munder, a vicar, and by him she had two daughters though only one survived childhood. Caroline passed away at the house of her father in April 1833 aged 49, her parents having both outlived her.

Caroline’s larger-than-life soulful eyes are a stylistic trait of the artist’s work. Freese was born around 1761 in Birmingham to a German father and an English mother but it was to London that he moved in order to practise as an artist. It is thought that he ceased painting commercially in 1814 following the death of his only son in the Peninsular War. His daughter, Mary, was an actress; she married into the Kemble family, well-known in theatrical circles.

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