Our cultural stereotype of a princess is pretty in pink, a sparkly Disney fantasy character that little girls dream of becoming.

And so it is timely, particularly in light of recent woman’s rights marches across the nation and the globe that New Haven’s Yale Center for British Art (YCBA) just opened an exhibition that shatters preconceived notions of real princesses.

“Enlightened Princesses: Caroline, Augusta, Charlotte, and the Shaping of the Modern World,” organized by YCBA with the United Kingdom’s Historic Royal Palaces, is the first exhibition to spotlight three Hanoverian Princesses: Caroline of Ansbach (1683-1737), Augusta of Saxe-Gotha (1719-1772) and Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (1744-1818), each of whom shared a common German ancestry and married into the British royal family.

The intention of the show’s curators and organizers was to bring these brave and bold women out from under their husbands’ shadows and celebrate their many and varied contributions to society.

“These women, who were part of this royal court, were extraordinarily important in their roles in the political and social arena of their time and in giving us a clear sense of the impact they made on their own world and hence the world we live in today,” says YCBA director Amy Meyers.

“Much has been written about Kings George I, II, and III, and the rise of the ‘Great Empire,’ but the role of the women, their wives, has really been a subject which has been (neglected),” says Joanna Marschner, lead curator for this exhibition and senior curator at Historic Royal Palaces, an independent charity that manages six royal palaces. “And this was something that has concerned us because the women, three princesses, well educated, fulfilled their roles with equal care and consideration, and it is our intention to bring to (them) the attention they deserve.”

The ambitious exhibition was more than five years in the making and gathers close to 300 objects from both public and private collections across Britain, Europe, and the U.S.

There are paintings by artists of the 16th-18th centuries, including Hans Holbein the Younger, Mary Delany, Allan Ramsay, Joshua Reynolds, George Stubbs and Thomas Gainsborough, as well as objects by craftsmen and designers Anna Maria Garthwaite, Matthew Bolton and Josiah Wedgwood and architects William Kent, William Chambers and others.

Also on view are exquisite court costumes and jewels, along with musical manuscripts, botanical and anatomical illustrations, architectural drawings, garden designs, artwork by the royal children, and the princesses’ own scientific instruments. 

All of these objects were selected to illustrate how each of the princesses promoted the arts, sciences, trade and industry, as well as their philanthropic efforts in the health and welfare of women and children.

“This is an exhibition that has no holds barred,” Meyers stresses. “It deals with many of the highlights and advances of a progressive and enlightened age but also deals with what was problematic as an age of empire and an age of colonialism. So we’re very open and honest.”

(sub) Princess-ly themes

The exhibition is divided into five sections.

“The Court as a Stage” illustrates how the royal court was not only a stage for music, dance and theatrical performances, but was also a forum for politics and culture — and how, while the princesses patronized the arts, they also had to navigate the changing politics of public and private life in the royal court.

“Cultures of Learning: Powerful Conversations” focuses on the individual princess’s relationships with leading figures of their times, including politicians, clergymen, philosophers, gardeners, architects, playwrights, and composers — and their common interests in science, medicine and philanthropy, as well as the commercial interests of Britain and abroad. 

“Royal Women: Education, Charity, and Health” reflects the rapidly changing attitudes towards child-rearing, women’s and children’s health and social welfare, with a focus on the Foundling Hospital — a charity, supported by all three princesses, that promoted social change by providing assistance to disenfranchised and voiceless children.

“As women became very powerful in this growing merchant society and, in particular, in central London, which of course is, in many ways, the heart of the culture, they invested in the growing interest in the welfare of women and children across the nation,” says Meyers.

“An interest in the modern science of obstetrics grew with the professionalism of medicine,” she continues. “Obstetrics, and much of medicine into the late 17th century, was in the hands of the apothecary and women, who were the really great druggists of the age until this new moment, when there was a transition of the hands-on practice of male physicians dealing with the female body. It was a very complex and fraught story.”

Meyers explains that Charlotte was deeply knowledgeable about the work of William Hunter, her physician, who played a leading role in changes in obstetrics. And she underwrote the ability for women who were pregnant out of wedlock and unable to have their children at home, as well as women in general, to have their babies in the hospital.

“Political Gardening” looks at how the three princesses created and recreated each other’s gardens, which incorporated the “products of empire” — plants and animals collected from the exploration of many continents for their beauty and rarity, as well as economic value. In designing their gardens, the women implemented contemporary garden philosophies and put into play their architectural ambitions. All three were architects of Kew Gardens, which became a great botanical institution.

The final section of the exhibition, titled “To Promote and Protect: The Princesses and the Wider World,” reflects Britain’s increased expansion following the American War of Independence, which Caroline, Augusta, and Charlotte celebrated by furnishing their homes and gardens with imports from the Caribbean, India, Africa, China and Australia.

Augusta, who had developed her own textile industry and was lobbying for her own initiatives in South Carolina, had formed a relationship with Eliza Pinckney, who produced silk on her father’s land in the Carolinas.

“They had extraordinary conversations about wet nursing, politics, the Native American population, their relationships with the French, the experience of being in a hurricane, and even exchanged recipes, all described in a detailed letter from Carolina (that’s on view)," Marschner says.

Marschner points to one of the smallest item in the show — a silver coin from the reign of King Charles II — as a symbol of the bigger message she hopes is conveyed by the exhibition.

“On one side, there is an image of Britannia and the motto of the role of the king — to ‘Rule and Defend,’” she says. “On the reverse is an image of Carolina with a watering can, watering palm trees with the legend — to ‘Promote and Protect.’ That balance of responsibility you see discharged in the agency of each of these three women. During a century in which there is an extraordinary explosion of ideas and each of them against the assets, the problems, they (still found) so many opportunities to use to their advantage … in shaping and influencing their era in the most vibrant of ways.”

If you go

What: "Enlightened Princesses: Caroline, Augusta, Charlotte, and the Shaping of the Modern World"

Where: Yale Center for British Art, 1080 Chapel St., New Haven

When: Through April 30; 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tues.-Sat. and noon-5 p.m. Sun.

Admission: Free

For more information: (203) 432-2800, britishart.yale.edu