Portrait of Mrs Mary Graham

One of Gainsborough's finest portraits, it has become an icon of the Scottish National Gallery.

It is one of three works the artist completed of Mary Graham. A more conventional half length portrait, The Hon. Mrs. Thomas Graham, also completed between 1775 and 1777 is believed to be the painting that was initially commissioned.[2] It is now part of the Widener collection in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. [3]

The sitter was born Mary Cathcart on 1 March 1757. She was the daughter of Charles Cathcart, 9th Lord Cathcart and Jean Hamilton,[4] Charles Cathcart had recently served as the British ambassador at the court of Catherine the Great to rectify his family's finance.[5]

At aged 16 Mary married Thomas Graham in a double wedding with her older sister Jane, who married John Murray, 4th Duke of Atholl. Her younger sister, Louisa was married to David Murray, 2nd Earl of Mansfield.

The Hon. Mrs. Thomas Graham, National Gallery of Art

It was Mary's looks that caused a stir when Gainsborough exhibited her full length portrait at the Royal Academy in London in 1777. It secured her reputation as an icon of contemporary beauty and helped her to quickly become a prominent figure in the fashionable society of Georgian London.[6] She attracted many admirers from Robert Burns to Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire who recalled ‘her goodness, her sense, her sweetness’.[7]

Sadly, Mary soon fell ill with Tuberculosis. Throughout her illness, she was nursed attentively by her husband. They first moved to Brighton, and then as her health deteriorated further, via revolutionary Paris, to the Mediterranean, in search of warmer climates. They reached the sea, but she died on 26 June 1792, near Hyères, aged just 35.[8][9]

Thomas Graham lived another 50 years, but never remarried. He was so grief-stricken, he could not bring himself to look upon his wife's portrait. It was placed into storage and almost forgotten about, until it was exhibited 65 years later in Manchester in 1857.[10] Two years later it was bequeathed by his descendants to the recently opened Scottish National Gallery.