Wills and Kate watch out: Risqué Georgian royal wedding caricatures go on show at Kew Palace

Exhibition: Georgian Royal Caricatures, Kew Palace, Kew, from April 2011

Some things do not change. It might seem that the excitement steadily building around the Royal wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton is a distinctly modern phenomenon born of our celebrity-obsessed times, but it was ever thus.

Back in the Georgian period the betrothal of George VI’s 20-year-old daughter, Princess Charlotte, aroused widespread excitement as the nation was gripped by the fortunes of their incumbent Royals.

There was, however, a flipside, as a selection of prints going on show at Kew Palace reveals.

The former home of King George III is marking the 250th anniversary year of his coronation with an exhibition of rarely-seen Georgian royal cartoons from the golden age of caricature. Some of them are so cutting they would have shocked modern audiences.

They include two prints depicting royal weddings of the period, including James Gillray’s The Bridal Night, published in May 1797. It depicts the marriage of Charlotte Princess Royal, the eldest daughter of George III, to Frederick Duke of Wurttemberg. 

Dubbed the Bellygerant, Napoleon said of him “that God had put him on earth to see how far skin could stretch…”. Gillray mercilessly depicts Frederick as ridiculously fat, and cheekily portrays the wedding night with a cherub sat atop an elephant.

“Many of the caricatures may seem shocking by today's standards,” says Susanne Groom, Curator of Collections at Historic Royal Palaces. “Prints of the weddings of the overweight, aging daughters of George III to their ludicrously corpulent German husbands provided amusement for the general public when they appeared in the print shop windows.” 

Only slightly less brutal is Charles Williams’ Throwing the Stocking, published in April 1816.

It shows Princess Charlotte, the daughter of George IV, on her wedding night in her bed, throwing her stocking to the four old maid aunts (the daughters of George III). Her husband, Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, is impatiently peeping round the door.

The depicted aunts were kept unmarried first by their father, then by their mother to buffer her from their father in his "madness". Kew Palace became renowned for being home to these sisters, unmarried against their will.

United with personal objects of the caricatured royals the fascinating print collection offers an insight into how the portrayal of George III and his family in the press developed throughout his reign, the longest of any male British monarch.

It seems the often-strained relationship of the Monarchy and the British press is a deep-rooted one.

• Open 10am-5pm (11am-5pm Monday). Admission £5.30/£4.50 (free for under-16s).