The illegitimate daughter of George Gordon, Marquess of Huntly, and later 5th Duke of Gordon, and Jane Graham, she spent much of her childhood in London where she was born. Educated first at a convent school kept by refugees from the French revolution, presided over by Madame la Comtesse d'Escouailles, Georgiana became fluent in French and studied other languages, including Hebrew and Latin. 
She was only eleven years old when she began taking lessons in painting from John Varley, the landscape painter, who was by all accounts a brilliant teacher. She studied at the Royal Academy and visited Gordon Castle each summer. A miniature portrait of her grandfather, the 4th Duke of Gordon, won her a silver medal from the Society for Promotion of Arts in 1821 when she was only seventeen. 
The following year she won a silver palette award for the most promising young portrait painter in Britain. Georgiana also had considerable musical ability as both singer and pianist. From age seventeen till twenty-three she lived at Gordon Castle with her grandfather till he died in 1827. While living in Edinburgh she earned her own living. On 15 September 1830, at Gordon Castle, she 
married Andrew Murison McCrae and they became the parents of nine children. She followed her husband from Edinburgh to London and then to Port Phillip in Australia where he was successively a lawyer, squatter and goldfields magistrate. Andrew McCrae was on friendly terms with members of the Bunurong tribe of Aborigines, with whom he had constant dealings on his property on the Mornington peninsula. Georgiana was also a friend to them all, tended to their wants and drew their portraits with the same understanding, compassion and respect she had earlier shown in the representation of Scottish aristocrats. 
The character of Andrew Murison McCrae has tended to be obscured by the attention which historians, art critics and various authors have devoted to his wife. In fact Andrew has been consistently vilified as Georgiana has been exalted. The bare facts of his life in Australia are that he went into practice in 1839 as a solicitor in Melbourne with James Montgomery, the Clerk of the Peace, as a partner. 
However, by the end of 1842, the economy had collapsed and the partnership, faced with clients who could not honour their debts, was dissolved. In 1844 Andrew decided to take up a cattle run at the foot of Arthur's Seat on the Mornington Peninsula and the family left Melbourne in March 1845. Once again the enterprise was unsuccessful financially, and the McCraes returned to Melbourne in October 1851, the 12,000-acre station being sold for 1000 pounds. With the advent of the gold rush in Victoria, Andrew obtained official positions as Stipendary and Police Magistrate in various centres, including Alberton, Gippsland (1851-1854), Barrow's Inn, Hepburn, Crewick and finally for seven years at Kilmore. Georgiana and the children did not follow him to the goldfields but remained in Melbourne. 
Their marriage was not a consistantly happy one and in the end they were living virtually separate lives. For many years it was clear that Andrew harboured a great admiration and affection for his wife but there is scant evidence of Georgiana's reciprocating these feelings at the same level. In 1867 Andrew left Australia alone to spend seven years in Britain. On 24 July 1874, soon after his return, he died at Hawthorn in Victoria. Georgiana survived him by some sixteen years, also dying at Hawthorn on 24 May 1890. They are buried in adjacent graves in Boroondara Cemetary, Kew, near the gate in the wall adjoining Park Hill Road. 
 

Source: Leo van de Pas