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- BIOGRAPHY
An illegitimate daughter of George Gordon, Marquess of Huntly, later 5th Duke of Gordon, and of Jane Graham. Spent much of her childhood in London where, 15 March 1804, she was born. Educated first at a convent school kept by refugees from the French revolution, presided over by Madame la Comtesse d'Escouailles, Georgiana became fluent in French and studied other languages, including Hebrew and Latin.
When only eleven years old she began taking lessons in painting from John Varley, the landscape painter, who was by all accounts a brilliant teacher. She studied at the Royal Academy and visited Gordon Castle each summer. A miniature portrait of her grandfather, the 4th Duke of Gordon, won her a silver medal from the Society for Promotion of Arts in 1821 when she was only seventeen.
The following year she won a silver palette award for the most promising young portrait painter in Britain. Georgiana also had considerable musical ability as both singer and pianist.
From age seventeen till twenty-three she lived at Gordon Castle with her grandfather till he died in 1827. Later living in Edinburgh, she earned her own living by painting portraits. On 15 September 1830, at Gordon Castle, she married Andrew Murison McCrae and they became the parents of nine children. She followed her husband from Edinburgh to London and then to Port Phillip in Australia where he was successively a lawyer, squatter and goldfields magistrate. Andrew McCrae was on friendly terms with members of the Bunurong tribe of Aborigines, with whom he had constant dealings on his property on the Mornington Peninsula. Georgiana was also a friend to them all, tending to their wants and drawing their portraits with the same understanding, compassion and respect she had earlier shown in the representation of Scottish aristocrats. Georgiana, known during her lifetime as a cultured, witty and resourceful pioneer, was friendly with the artists, writers and politicians of early Melbourne. Her journals (edited by her grandson Hugh in 1934, were still in print 1999) are an invaluable record of pioneering life both in the township of Port Philip and at Arthur's Seat 'beyond the known bounds of civilisation'.
The character of Andrew Murison McCrae has tended to be obscured by the attention which historians, art critics and various authors have devoted to his wife. He went into practice in 1839 as a solicitor in Melbourne with James Montgomery, the Clerk of the Peace, as a partner. However, by the end of 1842 the economy had collapsed and the partnership, faced with clients who could not honour their debts, was dissolved. In 1844, Andrew decided to take up a cattle-run at the foot of Arthur's Seat on the Mornington Peninsula and the family left Melbourne in March 1845.The McCrae's slab homestead, built to the design drawn by Georgiana, is now a National Trust property with an important collection of McCrae family furniture, paintings and memorabilia, open to the public. Once again the enterprise was unsuccessful financially and the McCraes returned to Melbourne in October 1851, the 12,000-acre station being sold for 1000 pounds. With the advent of the gold rush in Victoria, Andrew obtained official positions as Stipendiary and Police Magistrate in various centres, including Alberton, Gippsland (1851-1854), Barrow's Inn, Hepburn, Crewick and finally for seven years at Kilmore. Georgiana and the children did not follow him to the goldfields but remained in Melbourne.
Their marriage was not a consistently happy one and in the end they were living virtually separate lives. In 1867 Andrew left Australia on his own to spend seven years in Britain. Soon after his return he became ill. Georgiana nursed him until he died at Hawthorn in Victoria on 24 July 1874, surviving him by some sixteen years and dying at Hawthorn on 24 May 1890. They are buried in adjacent graves in Boroondara Cemetery, Kew, near the gate in the wall adjoining Park Hill Road.
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