Marion Stodart (married surname: Wyld) (1783 - 1860)
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Marion Stodart by Sir Henry Raeburn. Click on image to enlarge.
I originally believed that this picture was of Alison Turnbull and was painted by George Watson and that it was held, in Kellie Castle in Fife, along with a picture of her husband, Robert Stodart.
However, I am told by a family in Connecticut that this is not the portrait of her but of her daughter, Marion Stodart, who married James Wyld of Gilston. They tell me that it was painted by the famous Sir Henry Raeburn and presently hangs in their dining room.
In his memoirs, her son George Wyld writes:
"My mother was the eldest of the family ... There is a portrait ... by Raeburn, ... of her in early married life as an interesting, and refined, and beautiful woman.
"In after years at Gilston, with thirteen living children, a tutor and governess in the house, some eight servants and probably a dozen visitors, the worry was sometimes too much for her. At such times she would leave the house and wander in the woods, and then returning home, would seclude herself in the bedroom and there comfort herself by writing letters, and reading William Law's Mystical Theology - but in the evening after dinner, she yet, when occasion called for it, could dance Scottish reels with the youngest of us, and this when she was upward of 70 years of age... My mother survived her beloved husband only a few months. Lovely and pleasant were they in their lives, and in their death were not divided."
Marion Stodart was, according to Robert Stodart Wyld, born in London around 1783, while her father was working there. She was educated at Linkfield School in Musselburgh, near Edinburgh. I think this is now called Loretto School.
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