Design and Art Australia Online

sketcher, was born in Sydney on 8 November 1843, the second daughter and fifth child of the stormy Presbyterian minister Dr John Dunmore Lang and Wilhelmina, née Mackie. She spent part of her childhood, from 1846 to 1850, in Britain but thereafter lived in New South Wales, until 1874 when with her father and aunt she travelled to the United States and Britain. While in Britain in 1874 Isabella and her only surviving sister Mary inherited the estate of Goulburn Grove near Dunmore in New South Wales from their uncle, Andrew Lang. On her return to Sydney Isabella married, on 8 July 1875, the Presbyterian minister at Paddington, Rev. Peter Falconer Mackenzie, who before 1874 had been unaware, in her father’s words, 'when paying his addresses to Isabella, that he was courting a lass with a “tocher”’.

Isabella was minister’s wife at Paddington until 1883 and thereafter, until her husband’s death in 1904, at the new Hunter Baillie Memorial Church in Annandale (which her husband planned) where she was deeply involved in the large Sabbath School. The marriage was childless. After 1904 the widowed Isabella lived with her sister Mary and her invalid brother John at Dockra near Casula, surrounded by objets d’art collected abroad by John in his earlier years. She died at Casula on 24 January 1925.

Isabella’s drawing-book, inscribed by her in 1859 when she was fifteen years old, contains pencil sketches of buildings in England and France and two watercolours of flowers, one signed and dated 1863. Her father, in a letter to Adelaide Ironside dated 21 November 1862, noted that 'my daughter Isabella does a little occasionally in your way – well enough of course for a colonial girl, but with no pretensions to exalted genius like yours’.

Writers:

Jack, R. Ian

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

2011