Queen Elisabeth of Romania (1843 – 1916) took her first painting lessons since childhood from her father, Prince Hermann de Wied (1814 – 1864), himself an author inspired by watercolors and canvases. Hermann de Wied introduced her to the secrets of this art, teaching her the basics of watercolor, drawing and painting. Later, Elisabeth was recommended the Swiss painter, Ruth Mercier, with whom she deepened the field, without exceptional results, as the sovereign herself would honestly confess. Her vast knowledge of art and in particular, the study of painting allowed her access to the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin, where she continued her old passion under the careful guidance of Professor Waagen.
Elizabeth painted mainly religious scenes. Among her creations, a decorative table is preserved in Peles Castle, the circular top of which was painted by the queen in concentric registers. The scene depicts Jesus Pantocrator, surrounded by cherubs, biblical characters and scenes. The painting was made in the castle of Segenhaus in Germany, in 1892, during the exile imposed by King Carol. The chapel in the Royal Bedroom upstairs was painted – probably – also by the Queen around 1900, with scenes representing musical angels.
Queen Elizabeth also decorated two Gospels with illuminations: one donated to the Sinaia monastery and another to the Curtea de Arges monastery. This seems to have been her area of excellence.
In the collection of Peles Castle, a manuscript is kept with Beatitudes of the New Testament, decorated by the queen in collaboration with the painter Otilia Mihail Otetelesanu, whose covers of silver, cabochons and carved ivory were created in Bucharest, by the Radivon workshop. This manuscript was made in 1913 and was a gift offered to King Carol I on the occasion of his 74th birthday.
The other manuscript, which contains diary pages written in Gothic German shortly after Maria's death, is dated 1874. The covers of the manuscript were made by the Hancock workshop in London, the body of the book being the creation of Queen Elizabeth and the painter Laetitia Witzleben. The manuscript appears in photographs of Queen Maria at her coronation.
In 1878, the queen created an oil on canvas called Composition, in which he exercises his talent for still life.
In 1884, Queen Elisabeth was welcomed into the ranks of the Romanian Academy. Excited and flattered, the first queen of Romania, internationally recognized as a poet Carmen Sylva for her varied and sensitive work she presents herself before the highest cultural forum with the text of the allegory "Chicken". Writing of great subtlety, in which he expresses the most ardent political aspirations of his adopted country in a poetic language, loaded with metaphors, "Chicken" becomes the subject of an inspired watercolor, which today finds its place in the Old Music Hall of Peles Castle.
In a vertical composition, the talented queen painted a young peasant woman in folk costume, with a wreath of flowers on her head and long hair loosely tied back, which she immortalized in a gesture of contemplation of the horizon.
Personification of Romania, recently liberated from oppressive Turkish domination, following the War of Independence waged by King Carol I between 1877 and 1878, ,,Chicken” – the character's nickname – "he raised his gaze into the distance - to the heavens, and in his dreamy eyes a great future was glimpsed."
In the chromatic palette of blue, green, shades of brown and colored grays, the queen artist meticulously reproduces the Gothic characters of the allegory's text, in a successful frame of motifs inspired by Romanian stitching, to which she adds, with a practiced hand, crafted garlands of clover, the universal symbol of luck.