Portrait of Carolina Frederica Kerst (1803-1883)

Carolina Frederica Kerst sits at a table with a letter in her hand, under a wide straw hat. She was the wife of the sculptor Louis Royer, and in 1830 Charles van Beveren painted the couple as a pair, soon after they came back from several years in Rome. The two panels are the same small size, 25 by 21 centimetres.

Behind her, in a niche in the wall, stands a bust her husband had made, so his work appears in her portrait as well as in his own. The letter and its envelope point to the years abroad, and the cross she wears marks her Catholic faith. She outlived her husband by 15 years and died in 1883.