George IV (1762–1830)

In English historical memory George IV is present above all as a luxury-loving, dissolute and politically incapable king. His historical reputation is largely negative; contemporaries and later observers alike have criticised his character, his debts, his marital scandals and his political unreliability at length. For the history of mourning jewellery, however, he is a central figure - as the originator of the lover's-eye fashion, as a personal devotee of sentimental jewellery, and as the father of Princess Charlotte, whose death in 1817 set off the first mass industrial wave of mourning jewellery in English history.

Early life and princely title

George Augustus Frederick was born on 12 August 1762 at St James's Palace in London - the eldest son of King George III and Queen Charlotte. He received a broad education in the classical languages, history, music and art, but showed from early on a strong inclination towards luxury, fashion and social conviviality. These traits were to mark his whole life.

On coming of age in 1783 he became Prince of Wales (heir to the throne) and the focal point of the English aristocracy. He was an eccentric authority on fashion, a passionate collector of jewellery, furniture, paintings and manuscripts, and a pronounced patron of the arts. His Brighton Pavilion (built 1815–1822) - a summer palace in a Chinese and Indian idiom - is regarded as one of the most eccentric royal buildings in Europe.

Maria Fitzherbert and the original lover's eye (1785)

In 1784 the young Prince George (then 22 years old) fell in love with Maria Fitzherbert, a wealthy Catholic widow six years his senior. An official marriage was out of the question - the Act of Settlement (1701) and the Royal Marriages Act (1772) forbade the English heir to the throne to marry a Catholic without the king's consent.

Nevertheless Maria Fitzherbert and George married in a secret ceremony in London on 15 December 1785. The marriage was legally invalid, but both regarded it personally as valid. In the following years the couple lived in a semi-public relationship; the truth about the secret marriage was known in court circles and among the political elite, but was never officially acknowledged.

It was in the context of this relationship that the original lover's-eye ring was made (see Lovers' Eye). George had the miniaturist Richard Cosway (or one of his associates) paint a tiny portrait of Maria Fitzherbert's eye - presumably on ivory, roughly 1.5 cm across. The image was set into a gold ring and was meant to allow George to carry his lover's likeness with him without making her identity recognisable to others.

The ingenious logic of the piece was this: a single eye is hard to attribute to any particular person. Whereas a miniature portrait with face and hairstyle would have been unmistakably identifiable, an isolated eye with surrounding lashes, eyebrow and a small area of skin tone was to third parties effectively anonymous. Only the wearer (and the person portrayed) knew whose eye was depicted.

The idea caught on quickly. In the years that followed - and especially after 1800 - aristocrats, the upper middle classes and court circles across Europe had lover's-eye pieces made. The genre saw its heyday between 1790 and 1830, that is, precisely during George IV's lifetime. He is therefore regarded as the personal originator of a jewellery fashion that became, for more than forty years, one of the most important forms of sentimental jewellery in Europe.

Marriage to Caroline of Brunswick (1795)

Because of his persistently high debts, the English Parliament in 1794 compelled Prince George to marry officially - as a condition for Parliament assuming his debts. The bride chosen was his cousin Caroline of Brunswick, a German princess of the House of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel.

The marriage (on 8 April 1795 at St James's Palace) was an utter disaster. George felt a strong aversion to Caroline the moment they first met; the couple were living apart within a few months of the wedding. A single daughter came of the union - Princess Charlotte, born on 7 January 1796.

George and Caroline remained formally married for the rest of their lives, but lived practically entirely apart. Maria Fitzherbert remained during this period George's actual personal partner - the unmarried but socially acknowledged companion of the Prince Regent and later king. Only around 1811 did the final separation come.

Princess Charlotte and her death (1817)

Princess Charlotte, the only daughter of George IV and heir presumptive, grew up in difficult circumstances - in a family torn by conflict, with parents living apart and a complicated relationship to both. Even so she developed into a popular public figure; her marriage to Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld (later King of the Belgians and uncle of the future Queen Victoria) on 2 May 1816 was celebrated as a central national event.

On 6 November 1817 Princess Charlotte died at the age of 21 giving birth to a stillborn son. She was at that time the only legitimate granddaughter of George III, heir presumptive after her father Prince George, and the great hope of the English crown. Her early death was an extraordinarily heavy blow to the English monarchy and set off a nationwide wave of mourning without parallel in English history.

The wave of mourning jewellery after Princess Charlotte's death is central to the history of jewellery:

• Mass production of mourning pieces. Thousands of mourning pendants, lockets and rings relating to Charlotte were made in the first weeks after her death. Workshops in London, Birmingham and Sheffield produced at full capacity.

• Mourning iconography. Charlotte mourning pieces mostly carried a combination of weeping willow, urn and the English crown. Inscriptions referred to her date of death, her initials or her title (P. C., In memory of H. R. H. Princess Charlotte).

• Industrial significance. The Charlotte wave of mourning is the first mass industrial mourning-jewellery event in English history. The stamped-sheet techniques that later became typical of Victorian mass-produced jewellery were here first used on a large scale.

• Cultural effect. The mourning for Charlotte made it clear that mourning jewellery need no longer be merely an aristocratic, elite practice but could be a national one. This broadening was a precondition of the later Victorian mourning-jewellery system.

For George IV, personally affected, Charlotte's death was a trauma. He fell into a severe depression, neglected his political duties for several weeks and had numerous mourning pieces relating to Charlotte made for himself. Several of these pieces survive in the Royal Collection.

Regency and coronation (1811–1820, 1820–1830)

When from 1810 his father George III could no longer rule because of a chronic mental illness (probably porphyria), Prince George assumed government as Prince Regent on 5 February 1811. The period between 1811 and 1820 - the Regency era - is extraordinarily formative for English culture in the history of style. Architecture (John Nash), literature (Jane Austen, Lord Byron, Walter Scott), fashion (the Empire silhouette) and jewellery (sentimental jewellery, lover's eyes) all saw a high point.

After the death of George III on 29 January 1820, Prince George was crowned King of England as George IV. The coronation ceremony on 19 July 1821 in Westminster Abbey was extraordinarily elaborate and expensive - a characteristic example of his love of luxury. At around £240,000 it cost roughly twenty times as much as the comparable coronation of William IV (1831) - and roughly a hundred times as much as the coronation of Queen Victoria (1838).

George IV reigned for ten years, until his death on 26 June 1830 at Windsor Castle. His political achievement was rather limited; he was no active agent of government and left most political decisions to his prime ministers (Lord Liverpool, George Canning, Lord Goderich, the Duke of Wellington). His cultural impact, by contrast - as art collector, patron, builder and arbiter of taste - was considerable.

Jewellery collector and patron of sentimental jewellery

George IV was one of the greatest private collectors of jewellery of his time. His personal collection ran to several thousand pieces - from coronation regalia proper (great diamond crowns, sceptres, the orb) to tiny sentimental pieces and lover's-eye rings. The Royal Collection (Windsor Castle) catalogues more than four hundred pieces from his personal collection.

His love of sentimental jewellery in the narrower sense is particularly well documented. He owned:

• Numerous lover's-eye pieces (the original Maria Fitzherbert piece of 1785 and several later commissions)
• Mourning lockets commemorating his mother (Queen Charlotte, died 1818), his father (George III, died 1820), his daughter (Princess Charlotte, died 1817) and other family members
• Sepia hair-painting pendants in the Georgian style
• Sentimental rings with locks of hair from his various lovers and family members
• Posy rings with inscriptions (both amatory and mourning mottoes)
• Miniature portraits on ivory, set in gold pendants

His collection was an important model for the English aristocracy and the upper middle classes. What the Prince Regent and later king wore was imitated. His personal taste therefore played a decisive part in shaping the English tradition of sentimental jewellery in the late Georgian and early Regency phase.

Legacy and significance in jewellery history

George IV died on 26 June 1830 at Windsor. He was succeeded by his brother William IV, who reigned for the last seven years before Queen Victoria's accession (1837).

In English historical memory George IV remains an ambivalent figure - admired for his taste and cultural influence, criticised for his luxury, his debts and his political failure. In the field of jewellery, however, his significance is beyond doubt:

• He is the personal originator of the lover's-eye fashion and thus of one of the most important innovations in sentimental jewellery of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
• He is the central figure of patronage in English Regency sentimental jewellery, with a formative influence on aristocracy and middle classes alike
• He is the father of the Princess Charlotte wave of mourning in 1817, which as England's first industrial mourning-jewellery event paved the way for the later Victorian system
• He is a jewellery collector of outstanding importance, whose collection survives in the Royal Collection to this day

In modern memorial jewellery George IV is present indirectly - when a workshop today makes a lover's-eye ring after a historical model, it is following, iconographically, the original commissioned by George in 1785. When a collector acquires a Georgian sentimental ring, it may be a piece from George's wider collection or from the aristocratic circle whose taste he shaped. In that sense George IV is not merely a historical figure but a continuing iconographic reference in European awareness of sentimental jewellery.