Louisa Caroline Baring, Lady Ashburton, was a Scottish art collector and philanthropist who had close connections with several artistic and literary figures of the period.
Early life
Louisa Caroline Stewart-Mackenzie was born on 5 March 1827 at Seaforth Lodge, Stornoway, on the Isle of Lewis, Scotland, the youngest daughter and sixth child of James Alexander Stewart-Mackenzie, a Scottish politician and British colonial administrator, and his wife Mary Elizabeth Frederica Mackenzie, known as "The Hooded Lassie". Her name Louisa honoured the isle of her birth. Her early childhood was spent at Brahan Castle near Dingwall, which her mother had inherited from the Seaforth family. In adolescence, she lived in Ceylon, while her father was governor and then in 1841, the family moved to Corfu, Greece, when he became Lord High Commissioner of the Ionian Islands. Upon his death in 1843 the family returned to Brahan Castle, where Louise lived until her marriage. Of fiery temper, insatiable restlessness, and socially ambitious, she collected paintings and important friends with an almost manic need. In her youth, Louise studied drawing with John Ruskin, who saw her as a romantic young girl, with a desperate desire to marry. Among her notable friends were Robert Browning, to whom she at one time unsuccessfully proposed marriage, Thomas Carlyle, Edwin Landseer, whose attentions she rejected, Florence Nightingale and Pauline, Lady Trevelyan.
Art collection
Lady Ashburton was known for amassing a large collection of art works and distributing them among her residences at Seaforth Lodge, Melchet Court in Hampshire, and Kent House in Knightsbridge, London. Though no inventory existed, among the known works were sketches, watercolors and sculptures by Rubens, Mantegna, Rossetti, W. L. Leitch, Harriet Hosmer, Edward Lear, G. F. Watts, Marochetti and Titian. When she tired of collecting, Lady Ashburton became an advocate for temperance and a benefactor to several noted charities, including the Ashburton Home of Rest and the Canning TownMission to Seamen, as well as several clean water initiatives and charitable societies affiliated with religious organizations. The collection was bought by a syndicate of London art dealers in 1907 to be further sold.
After a year of ill health, Lord Ashburton died in 1864. Lady Ashburton subsequently had an intimate relationship with the American sculptor Harriet Hosmer, whose studio she first came to in the spring of 1867. Hosmer recalled being immediately smitten by Lady Ashburton's "statuesque beauty" and compared her to a goddess, writing, "There was the same square-cut and grandiose features, whose classic beauty was humanized by a pair of keen dark eyes." Lady Ashburton ordered several pieces of Hosmer's work and fairly quickly became a patron. The relationship changed from friendship to a romance in the spring of 1868 when the two took a trip to Perugia, Italy. The apparent exclusivity Harriet longed for was threatened by several relationships Louisa had, notably by an approximately three-year involvement with the poet Robert Browning and by a complicated relationship she had with her daughter's tutor, Margaret Trotter. And no matter how much Harriet liked to consider herself Louisa's "hubby", she, too, had occasional extra-relational involvements.
Death and legacy
Lady Ashburton died of breast cancer on 2 February 1903 at Kent House, Knightsbridge, London. She is buried at Kinlochluichart Church, Garve, Highland, Scotland. Her papers, along with other members of the Ashburton Family have been deposited at the National Library of Scotland. Because of the extensive correspondence with other notable figures, the archive is an important historic collection.
