The Marquess and Marchioness of Lorne, by Heinrich von Angeli, 1875

 

In 1871, Princess Louise (Louisa Caroline Alberta; 18 March 1848, London - 3 December 1939. London), the sixth child and fourth daughter of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, married John Campbell (John George Edward Henry Douglas Sutherland Campbell; 6 August 1845, London - 2 May 1914, Cowes), the Marquess of Lorne and, later, the 9th Duke of Argyll.

This was the first time since 1515 that a legitimate daughter of the sovereign had married a subject of the Crown. The pair shared a common love of the arts - Louise was a talented sculptor - but the marriage was childless and unhappy, and they spent much time apart. Lorne formed close friendships with men who were known to be homosexual or bisexual, and there has been conjecture that he may have been as well. Louise was an energetic supporter of the arts, higher education, and of the feminist cause.

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Lorne was Governor General of Canada from 1878 to 1883, and the couple's tenure there was a success. On their return to England, Queen Victoria allocated them apartments in Kensington Palace where they would live for the remainder of their lives. Lorne succeeded to the title of Duke of Argyll in 1900. He suffered from dementia in his last years and Louise nursed him devotedly, the couple becoming closer than they had been before. Following his death in 1914 at the age of sixty-eight, Louise had a nervous breakdown, writing to a friend shortly afterwards: "My loneliness without the Duke is quite terrible. I wonder what he does now!" The Princess lived on for another twenty-five years, passing away at the age of ninety-one.

Lorne wears Highland dress in his portrait, along with the riband and star of the Order of the Thistle.

The portraits were commissioned by Queen Victoria who, on their delivery, was delighted with the results. She wrote to her eldest daughter, Victoria, Crown Princess of Prussia: "I have now got Louise's here and I own it is most exquisite. It is wonderfully, marvelously like, and there is a depth of feeling in the eye and mouth which are Louise herself and (as with all Angeli's pictures) you can look at it quite close by as though it were enamel - which is really what the surface is like…Lorne's is very good too and equally characteristic." 

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Von Angeli was paid £150 for each of the portraits, the pair of which were placed in the Queen's drawing-room at Osborne House.