This is somewhat outside our usual sphere, but it appeals at several levels. It is of course a superb bit of watercolour, technically faultless and effortlessly stretching Mabel’s talents as a miniature painter to a more domestic scale. It is a good military portrait of an officer in the uniform kilt of the Black Watch. Mainly it is an interesting piece of British Royal memorabilia as a portrait of The Late Queen’s great uncle and her cousin who later became Princess Anne of Denmark. The Hon John Bowes-Lyon (1886-1930) was the second son to the Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne, one of ten siblings and elder brother to Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. He had an inglorious war, accidentally shooting off his left forefinger, he was invalided home in 1915. Of his five daughters, Anne was the second, although she became the eldest surviving after her sister died in infancy. Her first marriage to Viscount Anson, heir to the Litchfield earldom, ended in divorce in 1948 and she remarried two years later to Prince George of Denmark. Her son inherited the Earldom and became a professional photographer as Patrick Litchfield. Her daughter, also from her first marriage, was the party planner Lady Elizabeth Shakerley whose heirs inherited this painting.
