Thanks to the work of the caricaturists of the late 18th century, the mistresses of the future George IV – Mrs Fitzherbert, Mary ‘Perdita’ Robinson and Lady Jersey among them – are better known to us than his eventual wife, Caroline of Brunswick. The Prince of Wales’s decadent, spendthrift lifestyle (we see him emerging in 1788 from a lavish four-poster from which Mrs Fitzherbert arises en déshabillé), combined with his florid face and corpulent physique, were perfect fodder for this new genre of artistry, which used caricature (or visual exaggeration) to make political points.
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