Prince Frederick of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg, by Jens Juel, 1802

This charming portrait was painted when the Prince was only two years old, and in the last year of the artist's life.

Prince Frederick Emil August of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg (23 August 1800, Kiel - 2 July 1865, Beirut), later Prince of Noër, a prince of the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg and a cadet-line descendant of the Danish royal house.

He was the second and younger son of Frederik Christian II, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg and Louise Auguste of Denmark. As such, he was in the line of succession to the Danish throne, and was the brother-in-law of King Christian VIII and nephew of King Frederik VI. His elder brother, Christian August II, succeed in 1814 to the dukedom of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg.

I find the very restrained palette of this painting quite beautiful.

In 1829, Frederick married his second cousin, Countess Henriette of Danneskjold-Samsøe, a Danish noblewoman and great-great-great granddaughter of Christian V of Denmark. (Belonging to an illegitimate branch of the House of Oldenburg.) They had four children together, two of whom survived infancy.

His wife died in 1858, and six years later he married again, morganatically, to Mary Esther Lee, thirty-seven years his junior and the daughter of a New York merchant. With this marriage he renounced his rights of succession to the House of Augustenburg and was then created Prince of Noër (or Nør, in Danish) by Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria. He died in Beirut the following year on his honeymoon at the age of sixty-four.

And the exquisite little shoes...!

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Jens Juel (12 May 1745, Falster – 27 December 1802, Copenhagen), Danish painter, primarily known as a portraitist. His work is considered by many to represent the pinnacle of Danish portrait painting during the second half of the eighteenth century.

The illegitimate son of a serving woman and a gentleman, his mother later married a teacher who adopted him. Showing an early interest in art, his parents apprenticed him to a painter in Hamburg where he spent the next five or six years; he became so skilled that he was soon able to live off of his work. At twenty, he moved to Copenhagen to attend the Royal Danish Academy of Art where, two years later, he was awarded its small gold medal and in 1771 the great gold medal, both for Biblical themes. The next year he went to Rome where he spent four years, then to Paris and Geneva. His reputation preceding him, in 1780 he returned to Copenhagen where he painted portraits for the royal family and the nobility, and was designated court painter. Two years later he was unanimously elected a member of the Danish Academy. He became the director there in 1795, a position he continued to hold until his death seven years later, at the age of fifty-seven.