Joseph Hartmann (1812-85) was born at Ried in Austria. The city of Vienna played host to his early career but he 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 Irene of Hesse (1866-1929), third daughter of Louis IV, Grand Duke of Hesse, and Princess Alice, Queen Victoria’s second daughter, married, in 1888, her first cousin, Prince Henry of Prussia, second son of Emperor Frederick III of Germany, and Victoria, Princess Royal. Two of their three sons suffered from haemophilia, one, Prince Henry, dying in infancy. The Prince and Princess of Prussia were close to the British Royal Family, particularly King George V and Queen Mary, before the outbreak of the First World War. Prince Henry then commanded the German Navy, and Princess Irene’s eldest sister’s husband, Prince Louis of Battenberg, was in command of the British Fleet as First Sea Lord. Following the war, Princess Irene lived quietly at Hemmelmark, near Kiel, and died in 1953, the last of Princess Alice’s daughters.

The Princess appears here head and shoulders, wearing a low-cut lace-trimmed dress, a pendant suspended from a ribbon, and a ribbon in her hair.