SUBJECT OF A PORTRAIT

Taranaki Daily News, 10 July 1929, Page 4

SUBJECT OF A PORTRAIT

DUCHESS OF SUTHERLAND. LIFE FILLED WITH TRAGEDY. The Romney portrait that has been sold by the Duke of Sutherland to an American art dealer is interesting, apart from the fact that a copy was mistaken for the original and nearly sold for a very large sum of money. The woman who sat for this portrait was Elizabeth, Countess of Sutherland in her own right, and also the first Duchess of Sutherland, as her husband, Lord Gower, was created Duke of Sutherland when his father, the Marquis of Stafford, died. So during the latter part of her life Elizabeth Sutherland was known as the Countess Duchess. She was the youngest of two daughters of the Earl and Countess of Sutherland of Dunrobin Castle.-Suther-land. Her older sister met her death by the most extraordinary accident, when

she was still a child. One day her father hurried into the room where his wife and children were playing together. He was on his way out of doors, and, while he talked to his wife, he flung a coat around his shoulders. In doing so the coat struck the eldest child. She fell, striking the back of her head, and was killed. - Lord and Lady Sutherland were so greatly affected by this tragedy that they went to the town of Bath for their health, leaving the little Elizabeth with relations. After a while the child and her governess travelled to England to join her parents. Just outside Ba.th they met a double funeral and on inquiry they were told that it was the funeral of the Earl and Countess of Sutherland, who had died within a few days of each other. At Holyrood there is, a tablet commemorating this event. So Elizabeth became Countess of Sutherland in her own right. When she was 17 years old a marriage was arranged for her with Lord Gower, who was old enough to be her , father. Lord Gower was the British Ambassador in Paris from 1790 to 1792, during the time of the French Revolution, and his wife, Lady Sutherland, used to send her own little son’s clean linen every day to the temple for the unfortunate Dauphin, who was imprisoned there. The ambassador and his wife remained in Paris until he was recalled by the Government. It w’as some time after this that the Marquis of Stafford, died and Lord Gower was created Duke of Sutherland. The life of the Countess, Duchess strikes one as a strange mixture of tragedy and fame —the sudden deaths of her sister, mother and father, and later all the horror of the French Revolution, on the one hand; on the other, wealth, great properties and a superfluity of titles. This was the woman whose portrait will shortly cross the Atlantic to a new home in America.