Her Royal Highness, the Princess Louise Caroline Alberta was born at Buckingham Palace on 18 March 1848. She was the sixth child and fourth daughter of Queen Victoria and her husband, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. After the death of her father in 1861, Princess Louise fulfilled the role of unofficial private secretary to her mother. On his visit to Osborne House in 1863, Hallam Tennyson, son of the poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson, remarked that Louise could ‘draw beautifully’. However, because of her royal rank, an artistic career was not considered. The Queen permitted Princess Louise to attend art school, where she was tutored by the talented sculptress Mary Thornycroft (1809-95), and in 1863, she enrolled at the National Art Training School, South Kensington. Louise was the most artistically talented of Queen Victoria’s daughters. As well as being an able actress, pianist and dancer, she was a prolific artist and sculptress. When Louise sculpted a statue of Queen Victoria, portraying her in her coronation robes, the press claimed that the eminent sculptor Joseph Edgar Boehem had executed the work. That claim was refuted by the princess’s friends and today, the statue may be found overlooking the round pond in the grounds of Kensington Palace. In 1871 Louise married John Campbell, Marquis of Lorne in 1871. Her insistence on a love match, rather than dutifully marrying an improverished minor German royal caused some disquiet, which was quelled by Queen Victoria, who let it be known that the match had her approval. The union also pleased the British public which had feared yet another of the ‘German marriages’ which, in their view, had already occurred too often in the Royal Family. (Louise’s was the first marriage between an English member of a royal house and a commoner since that of Charles Brandon and Mary Tudor in 1515). In 1878 the marquess was appointed Governor General of Canada and Louise’s lack of stuffiness surprised the Canadians. Her practice of keeping open house was criticised by guests, who complained about the low social status of some attendees at events, with one guest being horrified to learn that they were dancing with their grocer. Louise and Lorne founded the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. The couple returned to England in 1883 and took up residence at Kensington Palace. During the closing years of Queen Victoria’s long reign, Princess Louise took on an increasing workload of public duties. Rumours were then spread that she was romantically involved with Arthur Bigge, the Queen’s assistant private secretary. In 1890 Boehm died of a burst blood vessel in his studio, leading to whispers that he and the princess had been having an affair. Boehm’s assistant Alfred Gilbert, who played an important role in comforting Louise after Boehm’s death, supervised the destruction of Boehm’s private papers and was rapidly promoted royal sculptor. Louise was also at various times linked to the architect Edwin Lutyens, her equerry Colonel William Probert and an unnamed music master. In 1900 her husband succeeded to his father’s title as 9th Duke of Argyll. The couple had no children and Louise nursed her husband through senile dementia. Upon his death from pneumonia in May 1914, she underwent a mental breakdown. Louise sculpted the memorial to her brother-in-law, Prince Henry of Battenberg, and a memorial to the colonial soldiers who fell during the Boer War, which may be found at Whippingham Church on the Isle of Wight. Another statue of Queen Victoria by Louise remains at McGill University in Montreal. She sculpted the memorial in the crypt of St Paul’s Cathedral in London to the Canadian soldiers who died in the South African War (1899-1902). Queen Victoria’s longest-lived and most accomplished daughter died at Kensington Palace on 3 December 1939. Unusually for one of her social standing, she left instructions that she was to be cremated at Golders Green. Her ashes were interred at Frogmore, Windsor in 1940. Lake Louise in the Rocky Mountains in Canada was named in her honour, as was the province of Alberta.