Joseph Hartmann (1812-85) was born at Ried in Austria. The city of Vienna played host to his early career but the artist later moved to Darmstadt where he received several commissions from the Grand Duke and Duchess of Hesse along with several eminent members of the ducal court. It is likely to have been through the recommendation of the Grand Duchess Alice, Queen Victoria’s second eldest daughter, that Hartmann found patronage at the Court of St James’s.

Princess Victoria (1866-1929) was the fifth child of Queen Victoria’s eldest daughter, Victoria, Princess Royal, and the German Emperor Frederick III. She married Prince Adolf of Schaumburg-Lippe in 1890. The couple had no children, and the prince died in 1916. Despite her family's disapproval Victoria married Alexander Zoubkoff, thirty five years her junior, in 1927. Largely due to his selfish and spendthrift ways, she was forced to auction the contents of the Schaumburg Palace and died of pneumonia in 1929, in much reduced circumstances, having announced her intention to divorce. the Princess is here shown head and shoulders, wearing a low-cut white dress with a pink bow on the right shoulder, and a medallion hanging at her neck.