Charlotte Philippine Jakobina Lauteren, née Michel, was born in 1813 to Carl Christoph Michel and Anna Catharina Michel, née Reinhard. In 1811, her father had moved the family's leather goods factory, Michel & Deninger, from Idstein in the Taunus to Mainz. As the daughter of a manufacturing family, her education probably focused on preparing her for her role as head of house, wife and mother, because the rising middle class could afford for wives not to have to contribute to the household income through paid work. At the
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age of 22, on March 24, 1835, Charlotte Michel married Christian Ludwig Lauteren , who was two years her senior and came from a respected wine merchant family in Mainz . Nothing is known about the relationship between the two spouses, but a fulfilling marriage based on affection and free choice was a middle-class ideal and deviations from this norm were recorded and only accepted in exceptional cases. In order to secure and expand resources, however, the choice of partner was limited to her own background and social milieu.
In wealthy middle-class families, it was common practice to portray oneself, one's social status and one's wealth in portraits – often in a posed, casual pose. Shortly after their wedding, the Lauteren couple had themselves portrayed by the renowned painter Benjamin Orth. The choice of painter alone shows the family's social position, but the picture itself also provides information about it: Charlotte sits on an armchair in white evening wear, possibly her wedding dress, holding an embroidery in her hands, while other needlework utensils lie ready on the side table in front of her.
Her husband stands diagonally behind her, one hand resting on the back of the armchair, the other on his hip. The staging allows conclusions to be drawn about the ideas about the distribution of tasks in marriage: the man stands, placed by the window and thus the outside world, he takes on the active role, while her tasks lie in the domestic sphere.
In the background, a river landscape can be seen through a window, reminiscent of the Rhine as the source of Lauter's prosperity. The window is partially covered by an opulent red curtain, a piece of equipment that was originally typical for aristocratic portraits. The family portrait was probably made for the representative salon of the Lauteren family. In the same context, a much smaller painting was created that only shows Charlotte Lauteren and was probably intended for the Michel family.
While Christian Ludwig joined his father's wine business in the same year as their wedding, Charlotte quickly became pregnant. Shortly after the birth of her child, she died in childbirth at the age of just 23. She did not live to see her husband establish the German sparkling wine producer a year later and later make a career in politics in Mainz and Hesse.