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拍品专文
FREDERICK, PRINCE OF WALES
Born in Hanover is 1707, the first child of George Augustus, Electoral Prince of Hanover, later King George II of Great Britain and Ireland, Frederick was educated in Hanover and remained there after 1714, when almost the entire Royal family of Hanover moved to England on the accession of Elector George Louis as King George I of Great Britain and Ireland. Frederick's great uncle, Ernst-Augustus, Prince Bishop of Osnabrück stayed, but it was the young Frederick who would receive diplomats and aristocratic visitors. As a young man he was finally brought to England in 1728 after his meddling caused the break down of a planned dynastic marriage and the relations between Hanover and Prussia suffered.
He married Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha (1719-1772) in 1735, but events around the birth of their first child, also Augusta, caused a rift with his parents that never fully healed. He was a great patron of the arts. He sponsored operas, employed the architect William Kent, the sculptor Rysbrack and the painter John Wootton. He bought silver from George Wickes. He also collected the works of Rubens and van Dyck, and reassembled many of the pictures once in the collection of King Charles I, sold during the Commonwealth. He also created much admired gardens at Carlton House in London and at his other residences, including Kew.
He had a active engagement in the politics of the time and a faction led by Frederick help unseat Walpole in 1742. Although somewhat of a womaniser in his early years, Frederick and Augusta enjoyed a happy marriage and had nine children. He was a great lover of cricket. His untimely death at the age of 44 in 1751 was rumoured to have been caused by an old injury inflicted by a cricket or real tennis ball, however, current thinking is that he suffer a pulmonary embolism. His son George III succeeded his grandfather, Frederick's father, nine years later.