6411

Mrs John McEwen, née Bridget Mary Lindley  1930

Half-length to the right, looking to the left, wearing a white dress with a blue wrap

Oil on canvas, 90.2 x 59.7 cm (35 ½ x 23 ½ in.)

Inscribed lower left: de László / 1930   

Laib L16805 (175) / C20 (16): Mrs. Nathuen [sic]

NPG 1929-1931 Album, p. 45

Sitters’ Book II, opp. f. 67: Bridget McEwen 14 November 1930

Private Collection

The present portrait was commissioned by the sitter’s father-in-law, Robert Finnie McEwen [6396], to hang with the other de László family portraits in the music room at Marchmont, Berwickshire. De László painted the sitter's husband John [6414] and his brother James in 1915 [6407], both in uniform, her sister-in-law in 1916 [10052], her mother-in-law in 1917 [6398] and her father-in-law, in 1925.

Bridget Mary Lindley, was born on 22 January 1904, the third daughter of the Rt. Hon. Sir Francis Lindley and his wife Etheldreda Mary Fraser, the third daughter of the 14th Lord Lovat. The four Lindley sisters were subject to continued upheavals in their youth as their father was posted to Cairo, Tokyo, Sofia, Christiania, Petrograd, Vienna and Athens between 1904 and 1923.  All these different environments gave Bridget an especially international and somewhat fearless outlook on life.  Her son recalled that as a child in Japan she used to go secretly into the garden every day to play with her “friend”. When the grown-ups discovered the friend was a snake, it mysteriously and suddenly disappeared. For the rest of her life she never had any fear of snakes and always thought of them as warm to the touch. She greatly admired the Japanese and their culture and thought them very like the English – an island race, who loved nature and were intensely private and suffered from colds and sticking-out teeth. Like her father, whose ambassadorship to Japan was curtailed, she thought England’s betrayal of Japan in favour of America after the First World War was disgraceful and foresaw the inevitable subsequent disastrous events. On 15 June 1923, at the Brompton Oratory, in London she married John Helias Finnie McEwen, the son of Robert Finnie McEwen and his wife Mary Frances Dundas of Marchmont, Berwickshire and Bardrochat, Ayrshire. Together they had six sons, James Napier Finnie (born 1924), Robert Lindley (born 1926), Roderick ‘Rory’ (born 1932), Alexander Dundas (born 1935), David Fraser (born 1938) and John Sebastian (born 1942) and a daughter, Christian Mary ‘Kisty’ (born 1929).

She served on local and international educational committees, founded her local Women’s Rural Institute branch, of which she was president for life, and was a local councilor. But above all she devoted herself to her family, which she considered the first duty of a married woman. She quoted with approval Pierre Renoir’s observation: “why teach women such boring occupations as law, medicine, science and journalism which men excel in, when women are so fitted which men can never dream of attempting and that is to make life bearable.”

She was a woman much admired for common sense and feminine refinement. Her favourite century was the 18th and her taste reflected it. She loved Marchmont and deplored Bardrochat. From her father, a great countryman, she inherited her love of natural beauty and from her grandfather, John Lindley, world-famous botanist and saviour of Kew, a particular love of flowers. She had immaculate taste and her planting and decoration enhanced the already considerable beauty of Marchmont. Lady McEwen died in 1971.

We are grateful to John McEwen for his assistance with this biography.

CC 2008