page_title: Alexander Stuart-Hill
section_title: Personal life
hierarchical_section_title: Alexander Stuart-Hill / Personal life
caption_attribution_description: Svenska: bröllopet mellan Gustav VI Adolf och Louise Mountbatten 3 november 1923 i Chapel Royal i St. James's Palace i London.
context_page_description: Alexander Stuart-Hill was a Scottish portrait and landscape artist who lived in Paris who was engaged to Princess Louise of Battenberg before her marriage to King Gustaf VI Adolf.
context_section_description: During World War I, Stuart-Hill worked in a military hospital in Nevers where he began a relationship with fellow volunteer Lady Louise Mountbatten. She was a daughter of Prince Louis of Battenberg, an admiral in the British Royal Navy who renounced his German title during the First World War and anglicised the family name to "Mountbatten" at the behest of King George V in 1917. Louise's mother was Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine, a granddaughter of Queen Victoria, and she was a sister of Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, and of Princess Alice of Battenberg (the mother of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh). She was also a niece of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna of Russia. Anticipating that her parents would be disappointed in the choice, Louise kept their engagement a secret for two years. Eventually, she confided in her parents, who were initially understanding, and twice invited him for visits at Kent House at East Cowes on the Isle of Wight. Her family, referring to him as "Shakespeare" because of his odd appearance, found him "eccentric" and "affected". Lacking resources, the engaged couple agreed to postpone marriage until after the war. But in 1918, Louise's father explained to her that Stuart-Hill was most likely homosexual, and that a marriage with him was impossible. In 1923, Louise later married Crown Prince Gustaf Adolf of Sweden and upon his ascension to the Swedish throne in 1950, she became Queen consort of Sweden.
  According to his obituary in The Times, besides painting, "there was nothing "Stuart" could not do with his hands, from building chimneys and repairing roofs to the most delicate work in petit-point embroidery." His studio, located at 41 Glebe Place in Chelsea, was a "lively social meeting place in the years before the Second World War." Attendees included members of the Bright young things, including Evelyn Waugh, Florence Mills, Alice Delysia, Turner Layton, and Clarence “Tandy” Johnstone.
  Stuart-Hill died in February 1948.
caption: 1923 wedding portrait of Lady Louise and Crown Prince Gustaf Adolf
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