Princess Patricia of Connaught
1886–1974 · British watercolour painter and granddaughter of Queen Victoria
Princess Patricia of Connaught (London, 1886 – Windlesham, 1974) was a British painter who worked principally in watercolour. A granddaughter of Queen Victoria, she grew up within the royal family, and her royal status has often overshadowed her work as an artist. She nonetheless became a recognised watercolourist and was made an honorary member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours.
She studied with Archibald Standish Hartrick, who had known Gauguin and Van Gogh, which is why her style is usually linked to their influence. Much of her work was inspired by journeys through tropical countries. The sources consulted do not identify specific watercolours by title.
Born at Buckingham Palace, the daughter of Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught, she spent part of her youth in India and later in Canada, where her father served as Governor General from 1911 to 1916 and where she became very popular. In 1919 she married the naval officer Alexander Ramsay at Westminster Abbey, and she gave up her title as a British princess and the style of Royal Highness. The couple had one son. Even so, she remained a member of the royal family and attended major royal ceremonies until her death.
Her name lives on in the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, a regiment whose colonel-in-chief she was from 1918 until her death, and in places such as Patricia Lake in Alberta and the Patricia Bay Highway in British Columbia. As a painter she is less present in the record than as a public figure, and the sources say little about her works.