Georgiana Huntly McCrae (15 March 1804 – 24 May 1890) was an English-Australian painter and diarist.
Early life
Born in London, she was the illegitimate daughter of
George Gordon, the Marquess of Huntly, son and heir to Alexander, 4th Duke of Gordon. Her mother was Jane Graham, about whom little is known: ‘whether she was a housemaid or a milliner, a singer or an actress, she did not belong to Lord Huntly’s world’.
Her father, although he publicly acknowledged her, played little part in her life but he financially supported her mother.
Some of her early life was spent time in
Scotland
Scotland (, ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a Anglo-Scottish border, border with England to the southeast ...
, with her first memories of playing with rocks in
Newhaven, near Edinburgh. By the end of 1806 she was back in London, where she was baptised on 6 October at St James' Church, Piccadilly.
By 1809, Georgiana and her mother had moved to
Somers Town, a district of London where she began her education at a
convent school
Catholic schools are pre-primary, primary and secondary educational institutions administered under the aegis or in association with the Catholic Church. , the Catholic Church operates the world's largest religious, non-governmental school syste ...
. Somers Town was full of French refugees from the
French Revolution
The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in coup of 18 Brumaire, November 1799. Many of its ...
some twenty years earlier. All lessons were in French and she was bilingual from an early age. She did not study there for long; because those who paid her school fees were worried about Catholic revolutionary influences, she was sent to
Claybrook House
Claybrook House is a Grade II listed house at 136 New King's Road, Fulham, London.
History
It was built in the early 18th century, and the architect is not known. From 1811 to 1816 (at least), it must have been a school as the diarist Loui ...
in
Fulham. After only a year there, she was then tutored at home.
Her first art teacher was Louis Mauleon, a civilian prisoner of war on parole who earned his living by making box cartons and jumping jacks for London toy stalls. For the next two years he arrived at her house each morning and helped develop her artistic skills, such as how to burn her own charcoal sticks.
Developing her talent (1813–1821)
In 1813 Georgiana’s beloved aunt, Margaret Graham died. She had left her sister (Georgiana's mother) £400, which was set aside for Georgiana’s use, possibly to buy a home of her own one day. After an illness in the winter of 1813, she was sent to a new boarding school in Somers Town, but after only a year returned home for good. By 1814, Georgiana had moved to near Regents Park in London. An elderly French priest, Abbé Huteau, took charge of her general education until 1820.
![4thDukeOfGordonOl](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cd/4thDukeOfGordonOl.png)
She now ‘worked single-mindedly at her painting and drawing’. Her biographer
Brenda Niall suggests this may have been in the expectation that Georgiana would have to make her own way in the world as a painter of portraits. However, as a woman artist, both her education and her career options were limited. The Royal Academy did not accept woman as students. She attended the studio of the landscape painter
John Varley, but portraits were her metier. Moreover, without a father, brother or husband to promote her, she would struggle to find patrons even with her painting skills established.
The Royal Academy did allow women artists to show their work at its annual exhibition, and at the age of 12 Georgiana had a picture shown — a view of a church in 1816 – with other pictures exhibited in following years. In 1820, she won a silver medal from the
Society of Arts
The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA), also known as the Royal Society of Arts, is a London-based organisation committed to finding practical solutions to social challenges. The RSA acronym is used m ...
for her portrait of her grandfather,
Alexander Gordon, 4th Duke of Gordon. A year later she won the Society's silver palette with her ''Portrait of a French lady''.
Scotland (1822–1830)
![George, Fifth Duke of Gordon](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/76/George%2C_Fifth_Duke_of_Gordon.jpg)
Around this time (Georgiana did not give a definite year in her memoirs), Jane Graham fell out of a wagon and struck her head. She was incapacitated for the rest of her life, and moved to Margate, where she died in 1838. Georgiana went to live at
Gordon Castle in Scotland, home to her grandfather, Alexander, 4th Duke of Gordon. She now lived surrounded by splendour, including galleries with paintings by Holbein, Titian, Van Dyke and Reaburn. The elderly Duke died in 1827, however, and at the age of 23 she went to live with her father (now the
5th Duke of Gordon) and his wife
Elizabeth
Elizabeth or Elisabeth may refer to:
People
* Elizabeth (given name), a female given name (including people with that name)
* Elizabeth (biblical figure), mother of John the Baptist
Ships
* HMS ''Elizabeth'', several ships
* ''Elisabeth'' (sch ...
at Huntly Lodge. Her father needed to deal with crushing debt left to him by Alexander, as well as rebuilding the east wing of Gordon Castle after it burnt down that same year.
When it came time for Georgiana to find a suitable marriage partner — approved of by the Duchess Elizabeth — there were three possible candidates. Andrew McCrae was a solicitor and distantly related to the Gordons. There was a Major McDonald who belonged to a Catholic family (and who promised to convert, making him acceptable to the very Protestant Duchess). Finally, there was Peter Charles Gordon, known as Perico, the heir of the Laird of Wardhouse and also a Catholic. Georgiana’s journal from this time reveals her preference for Perico, but on the basis of his religion the Duchess forbade it.
In 1829, she took up residence in
Edinburgh
Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian on the southern shore of t ...
to resume her career as a portrait painter. ‘If she could not have love and marriage, perhaps she might have fame instead’. Her first patron was Charles Kilpatrick Sharpe. She focussed at this time on painting women and children, especially the then-fashionable art of
miniatures. By 1830 she had made £225.
Married life and children (1830–1840)
On 20 January 1830 Andrew McCrae proposed to her, and she accepted later that month. They were married in Scotland in September that year. In the first decade of their marriage, their address alternated between London and Edinburgh. Her first child Elizabeth was born in 1831, followed by George in 1833, William in 1835, and Alexander in 1836. All were born in Edinburgh, which suggests a conscious decision to affirm their children's Scottish identity.
![Elizabeth, Duchess of Gordon](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Elizabeth%2C_Duchess_of_Gordon.jpg)
This decade also brought its share of tragedy. Her daughter Elizabeth died of fever in 1834, her father in 1836, her mother in 1838. Financially, too, they were in some trouble. Andrew McCrae’s legal career did not prosper, and they were disappointed on the issue of some expected legacies. Her father failed to sign his will, leaving her stepmother
Elizabeth
Elizabeth or Elisabeth may refer to:
People
* Elizabeth (given name), a female given name (including people with that name)
* Elizabeth (biblical figure), mother of John the Baptist
Ships
* HMS ''Elizabeth'', several ships
* ''Elisabeth'' (sch ...
responsible for any financial gifts to his three illegitimate children.
The prospect of immigration now arose. At this point many of the McCrae family, including his brother Farquhar, had decided to move to Australia. In November 1838 Andrew and Georgiana were to sail for Sydney on the ''Royal Saxon'', but the early arrival of her fourth son (named Farquhar) put paid to the idea of Georgiana leaving with him. A series of illnesses prevented McCrae’s family from joining him through 1839, all the while with Georgiana’s funds diminishing. She gave lessons and resumed painting portraits again while McCrae in Sydney struggled to establish himself. Eventually, after a failed land purchase in New Zealand, he moved to the newly established town of Melbourne and began practising law. Finally, in October 1840, Georgiana and her four children boarded the ''Argyle'' at Gravesend to rejoin her husband in his new life in Australia.
Melbourne (1841–1845)
![Melbourne Collins Street 1841](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/Melbourne_Collins_Street_1841.jpg)
After a four month journey involving the usual excitements, including a severe storm and a birth at sea, the ''Argyle'' anchored in
Hobson's Bay, near Melbourne on 1 March 1841. The newly reunited family moved into Argyle Cottage in
Little Lonsdale Street West, Melbourne, its steep rent of £100 per annum reflecting the lack of housing in the new town. A third McCrae brother, Alexander, arrived in Melbourne in 1841, joining Andrew and Farquhar to start his life afresh —- albeit with a lot of quarrelling between their respective families. As a sociable person, Georgiana quickly made friends, including with Sophie La Trobe, wife of the Government Superintendent
Charles La Trobe
Charles la Trobe, CB (20 March 18014 December 1875), commonly Latrobe, was appointed in 1839 superintendent of the Port Phillip District of New South Wales and, after the establishment in 1851 of the colony of Victoria (now a state of Austra ...
. Georgiana was kept busy looking after her four sons, whom she took on lengthy walks, as well as entertaining guests at dinner parties and painting portraits for friendship.
Andrew McCrae borrowed money to buy land near the Yarra river, close to town, and borrowed some more to build a house there. The floor plan was designed by Georgiana. Calle
Mayfieldthey moved there in February 1842. It provided a ‘bush idyll’ for the four boys. Also coming to live with the family was a Scottish immigrant named John McLure to tutor the boys. He was popular with the family and remained loyal to them through their tribulations for the next decade. A significant economic downturn was already being felt at this time, and by 1843 all the McCrae men were in financial difficulty. Unable to repay the loan, Mayfield was put on the market and the McCraes were made to pay rent on the property until it was sold. A request by Georgiana to the Duchess of Gordon for a monetary advance to buy the property came to nothing.
Lacking the money to return to Britain, which was Georgiana’s preference, the next option to present itself to Andrew was a pastoral lease at
Arthur's Seat
Arthur's Seat ( gd, Suidhe Artair, ) is an ancient volcano which is the main peak of the group of hills in Edinburgh, Scotland, which form most of Holyrood Park, described by Robert Louis Stevenson as "a hill for magnitude, a mountain in virtu ...
. The birth of their seventh child (named Margaret) in June 1844 delayed their departure, as did the time needed to construct a homestead and to dissolve his legal partnership. In June 1845, she and Andrew finally left, sailing down the bay for nine hours on the small sailing vessel ''Jemina'' to their new home.
Arthur's Seat (1845–1851)
The pasturage selected by Andrew was not ideal for cattle grazing, since it was at the base of a small forested mountain. Nor did he initially have enough cattle to make the lease a paying proposition.
However, at this point much of the best pasturage in the Port Phillip district had been occupied. (Andrew also appeared to prefer scenic beauty over more practical considerations). As at Mayfield, the house was not complete when Georgiana moved in. Her three older boys had been living there since January with their tutor John McLure, sleeping in huts and assisting in the construction of the house.
The
homestead
Homestead may refer to:
*Homestead (buildings), a farmhouse and its adjacent outbuildings; by extension, it can mean any small cluster of houses
* Homestead (unit), a unit of measurement equal to 160 acres
*Homestead principle, a legal concept t ...
(still in existence and now owned by the National Trust) had a floor plan designed by Georgiana and was built with local timbers, including messmate, stringybark and wattle.
The next six years at Arthur’s Seat were spent living simply, with the surrounding area providing them with enough fish, game, vegetables and wheat to be almost self sufficient.
It was also an ideal location to raise children. Georgiana was to have two more children whilst living at Arthur’s Seat, Octavia (b. 1847) and Agnes (b. 1851), probably without a doctor present. Georgiana herself gained a reputation in the area as a ‘medicine woman’, with a reputation ‘for dealing quickly and expertly with small wounds, splinters, boils and sandy blight’.
The family continued to entertain visitors, ranging on the social scale from
Charles and Sophie La Trobe to passing travellers. They also had cordial relations the local
Bunurong
The Boonwurrung people are an Aboriginal people of the Kulin nation, who are the traditional owners of the land from the Werribee River to Wilsons Promontory in the Australian state of Victoria. Their territory includes part of what is now the c ...
tribe, who often camped near their homestead at certain times of the year. Georgiana and oldest son George learnt many native words, and she painted two of them, Benbenjie an
Eliza.Her biographer notes how these portraits are sympathetic and avoid the usual stereotypes of native people at this time.
Unable to make the lease a paying proposition, the McCrae’s were forced to give up
Arthur’s Seat
Arthur's Seat ( gd, Suidhe Artair, ) is an ancient volcano which is the main peak of the group of hills in Edinburgh, Scotland, which form most of Holyrood Park, described by Robert Louis Stevenson as "a hill for magnitude, a mountain in virtue ...
in 1851. This was a blow to Georgiana, who had invested a lot of time and effort into their home, which included a pleasure garden. ‘''I must bid farewell to my Mountain Home – and forsake the garden I had formed & the trees that I planted’''.
The cottage that Andrew and Georgiana originally built at the foot of Arthur's Seat was later renamed
McCrae Homestead following its donation by Andrew McCrae to the
National Trust of Victoria
The National Trust of Australia, officially the Australian Council of National Trusts (ACNT), is the Australian national peak body for community-based, non-government non-profit organisations committed to promoting and conserving Australia's In ...
in 1970. It was initially repurchased in 1961 by Georgiana's great-grandson, George Gordon McCrae and then left to his son, Andrew.
Melbourne (1851–1867)
Her departure from
Arthur's Seat
Arthur's Seat ( gd, Suidhe Artair, ) is an ancient volcano which is the main peak of the group of hills in Edinburgh, Scotland, which form most of Holyrood Park, described by Robert Louis Stevenson as "a hill for magnitude, a mountain in virtu ...
led to a rupture in her relationship with her husband. He became a
Police Magistrate
The term magistrate is used in a variety of systems of governments and laws to refer to a civilian officer who administers the law. In ancient Rome, a '' magistratus'' was one of the highest ranking government officers, and possessed both judici ...
in
Alberton,
Gippsland
Gippsland is a rural region that makes up the southeastern part of Victoria, Australia, mostly comprising the coastal plains to the rainward (southern) side of the Victorian Alps (the southernmost section of the Great Dividing Range). It cove ...
, and later transferred to the same post in
Kilmore. Georgiana and her four young daughters lived in a rented house in
La Trobe Street West, Melbourne. Except for a few weeks at the end of his life, she and Andrew were not to live together again.
![Louisa Anne Meredith03](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/02/Louisa_Anne_Meredith03.jpg)
Melbourne had been transformed by the recent discovery of gold at various locations in Victoria (once a district of New South Wales, now a separate colony). Georgiana greatly enjoyed the intellectuals who brought to Melbourne ‘the sense of the living world of art and literature which books and newspapers from Britain could not adequately convey’. This included landscape painters who would subsequently become famous:
Nicholas Chevalier
Nicholas Chevalier (9 May 1828 – 15 March 1902) was a Russian-born artist who worked in Australia and New Zealand.
Early life
Chevalier was born in St Petersburg, Russia, the son of Louis Chevalier, who came from Vaud, Switzerland, and was o ...
and
Eugene von Guerard
Johann Joseph Eugene von GuérardHis first name is variously spelled "Eugen", "Eugene", "Eugène", one source mentions "Jean" (instead of "Johann"); his surname is spelled "Guerard" or "Guérard". The most frequent combination is that used by t ...
. In 1856 she met a woman as talented as her,
Louisa Anne Meredith
Louisa Anne Meredith (20 July 1812 – 21 October 1895), also known as Louisa Anne Twamley, was an Anglo/Australian writer, illustratorSally O'Neill,, Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 5, Melbourne University Press, 1974, pp 239–24 ...
, who was a painter, poet and writer. They stayed friends until Georgiana's death.
Despite the artistic and intellectual stimulus of gold-rush Melbourne, McCrae seemed to have done little of her own painting for the next two decades, except for a portrait of Meredith and two studies of another friend, Edith Howitt. In 1857 she exhibited with the Victorian Society of Fine Arts, gaining praise for her talent, but these may have been works completed decades earlier.
Her biographer has suggested that the stresses of her life and marriage, with its pattern of displacement, may have left her inner self ‘too fragile for creativity’.
In January 1864, the Duchess Elizabeth died. She had spent the last decades of her life engaged in church politics and evangelical work. After many years of expecting a bequest, based on her father’s unsigned will, Georgiana was shocked to find she had been left nothing. Moreover, it limited her sons’ prospects to whatever they could do for themselves in the colony. Georgiana coped with her anger by writing down her memories of Gordon Castle, perhaps her way of reaffirming her identity as the daughter of the Duke of Gordon. She also copied out her journals from 1838 to 1845, possibly editing out some of her past as well as making additions to it. At this time, somewhat remarkably, she also sought advice on divorcing Andrew, but the law on judicial separation was too narrow to allow this. Instead, on his retirement as Police Magistrate in Kilmore in 1867, Andrew left for Britain and stayed away for seven years.
Last years (1867–1890)
Georgiana lived with her still-unmarried son George in the east of Melbourne, initially in Collingwood, then Richmond. She wrote many letters, at which she was quite adept: it allowed ‘free play to her powers of observation, her gift for a pithy phrase, her malice’. Her husband returned to Melbourne in April 1874, but he was quite ill and died in July that year. He lived with George and Georgiana for these weeks, indicating that some sort of reconciliation took place. However, he left behind no money and no will. (This link â€
Andrew Murison McCrae— is a photograph of him in later life, held at the State Library of Victoria ).
In her last years, alternating homes with the families of her daughters in Kew and Hawthorn, Georgiana occasionally travelled to
Cape Schanck
Cape Schanck is a locality at the southernmost tip of the Mornington Peninsula in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, approximately south of Melbourne's Central Business District, located within the Shire of Mornington Peninsula local governme ...
, where she painted and spent time with Edith Howitt at the house she shared with her husband, Robert Anderson. She remained intellectually alert, but could be irascible, and also suffered physical ailments such as a troublesome hip and poor circulation. Sensing her life was coming to a close, she made out her will on 6 May 1890. She died on 24 May 1890, aged 86, in the presence of almost all her family. She was buried next to her husband a
Boroondara Cemetery
Georgiana was 'prevented by the conditions of her life from reaching her full height as an artist':
this included her illegitimate birth, marriage to a man who was not her first choice, and an exile to Australia, where she was repeatedly dislodged from beloved homes. However, her household was a beacon to artistic men and women, some ‘as isolated and unhappy as she was’,
and she showed herself as a woman 'of great courage, personality and ability'.
References
Further reading
* Niall, Brenda. (1994) ''Georgiana: a Biography of Georgiana McCrae, painter, diarist, pioneer''. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.
* McCrae, Hugh (ed) (1934, reprinted 2013) Georgiana's Journal. Melbourne 1841-1865. Canberra, Halstead Press.
* https://www.nationaltrust.org.au/places/mccrae-homestead/ National Trust — McCrae Homestead. Retrieved 21 June 2017
* http://www.kewcemetery.com.au/ Boroondara General Cemetery. Retrieved 21 June 2017
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{{DEFAULTSORT:McCrae, Georgiana
1804 births
1890 deaths
Australian diarists
Australian women painters
Daughters of British dukes
Writers from London
Australian women memoirists
19th-century Australian women artists
19th-century Australian painters
19th-century Australian women writers
19th-century Australian writers
Georgiana
Settlers of Melbourne
Australian portrait painters
19th-century diarists