Government

Miniature portrait of Mary Ewart, wife of the Reverend John Ewart, Minister of Troqueer (1730 - 1811)

Period:

18th Century

Date:

c1790

Attributed to:

Alexander Reid (1747 - 1823)

Description:

Mary Ewart was born in 1730, the only daughter of Joseph Corrie of Kelton and Carlingwark, near Castle Douglas.  Joseph Corrie was Provost of Dumfries between 1728 and 1730 and again from 1734 until 1736.

 

Mary and her husband John had seven sons and four daughters, although several did not survive into adulthood.

 

Joseph, their oldest surviving son, qualified as a doctor and became an envoy to the Court at Berlin.  The next, William, became a prosperous merchant in Liverpool, and godfather to William Gladstone, later Prime Minister.  William’s son, also William, became MP for Dumfries in 1841, and was responsible for the Public Libraries Act of 1850.  The main library in the town still bears his name.  John and Mary’s third son, John, also a doctor, became Inspector General of Hospitals in India, and the fourth son, Peter, became Chief Engineer of H M Dockyards.

 

This portrait, along with the Reverend John Ewart miniature are attributed to Alexander Reid (1747 = 1823), c.1790.

Materials/Media:

watercolour

Source:

Dumfries Museum & Camera Obscura

Accession Number:

DUMFM:2005.30.2

Digital Number:

DMFA068n

Copyright:

Dumfries & Galloway Council

Further Information

Further Information:

The miniatures have been examined by Dr Stephen Lloyd of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, who suggested Alexander Reid as the artist.

Reid was born in Kirkcudbrightshire, the second son of John Reid of Kirkennan. He probably received his art training in London and Paris. He concentrated on painting people, places and scenes in Galloway and Dumfriesshire. He exhibited at the Society of Artists in 1770.

Alexander Reid had a studio in Dumfries, in which he painted a miniature of the poet Robert Burns. Writing to George Thomson, his publisher, in a letter dated May 1795, Burns described Reid’s miniature: “However there is an artist of very considerable merit, just now in this town, who has hit the most remarkable likeness of what I am at this moment, that I think ever was taken of anybody. It is a small miniature; and as it will be in your town getting itself becrystallised, & etc. I have some thoughts of suggesting to you, to prefix a vignette taken from it to my song, ‘Contented wi’ little and cantie wi’ mair’, in order that the portrait of my face and the picture of my mind may go down the stream of Time together.”

Both miniatures were purchased with the assistance of the National Fund for Acquisitions administered with government funds by the National Museums of Scotland.