6613

UNTRACED

Alexander Albert Mountbatten, 1st Marquess of Carisbrooke 1920

Half-length slightly to the left, looking to the right and wearing service dress

Oil on canvas [dimensions unknown]

Inscribed lower right: de László / 1920. XI.

Laib L10121(353) / C 2 (17A)

NPG Album 1917-1921, p. 7

Sitters’ Book II, f. 18: Carisbrooke 3 Dec 1920

The Battenberg family were important early patrons of de László after his move to London from Vienna in 1907. Prince Alexander of Battenberg signed the artist’s sitters book three times, though he was only painted once. The first, dated 3 May 1909, appears under the signature of his mother Princess Beatrice [3488] and suggests that they were visiting the artist’s studio to see the portrait de László had recently completed of her brother-in-law Prince Louis of Battenberg [3464]. He visited again in April 1916, during which time de László was undertaking a posthumous portrait of the sitter’s brother Prince Maurice of Battenberg [3501], who had been killed at Ypres 28 October 1914.  

Prince Alexander ‘Drino’ Albert of Battenberg was born 23 November 1886 at Windsor Castle, the eldest son of Prince Henry of Battenberg (1858-1896) and his wife Princess Beatrice (1857-1944), youngest daughter of Queen Victoria. He was educated at Wellington College and served in the Royal Navy from 1902-8 before joining the British Army as a Second Lieutenant with the Grenadier Guards. In 1915 he was appointed to the Staff as an Aide-de-Camp and was made a Captain. In July 1917, at the request of King George V he and his family anglicised their name from the germanic Battenberg to Mountbatten. Alexander was raised to the peerage as Marquess of Carisbrooke, Earl of Berkhampsted and Viscount Launceston in 1917. On 19 July 1917 he married Lady Irene Frances Azda Denison [3183], daughter of the 2nd Earl of Londesborough. There was one child of the marriage, Lady Iris Victoria Beatrice Grace Mountbatten (born in 1920).

During the Second World War, at the age of fifty-five, the Marquess joined the Royal Air Force and was commissioned as an acting pilot officer on 6 June 1941. He served as a staff officer attached to Air Chief Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory. He relinquished his commission on 21 May 1945, retaining the rank of flight lieutenant. After the war the Marquess was a director of Eagle Star Insurance Co. Ltd., and the Australian Estates Co. Ltd.  

Lord Carisbrooke died in 1960 at Kensington Palace, the last surviving grandson of Queen Victoria. His ashes were buried in the Battenberg Chapel in St. Mildred's Church, Whippingham on the Isle of Wight.

EXHIBITED:

•Corcoran Gallery, Washington, D.C., Paintings by Philip A. de László, 26 February-20 March 1921, no. 40

KF 2017