Alison Scott’s portrait is the largest of the oil paintings on display in the Gallery. It is only natural to wonder why. Who was she to have commissioned such an ostentatious representation of herself? She was born Alison Langlands in Edinburgh and came to Otago with her parents as a 13-year-old on the Eden in 1850.
Her father, William Langlands, was a builder and architect in Dunedin. He designed the original Mechanics Institute at the foot of High Street, one of the most distinctive buildings in early Dunedin. He had a rather cantankerous personality and though he was keen on politics he was neither very popular nor very politic in expressing his opinions. He wrote frequent letters to the paper but his views were seldom widely supported and he failed to win any of the elections he contested, save a brief period on the original Dunedin Town Board. Nonetheless, he speculated prudently in land and made a lot of money from his investments. After his death in 1889, much of this money passed to Alison.
She had married another builder, James Scott, in 1855 and from 1862 developed a farm with him at Tokomairiro while raising 12 children. When James died, in 1887, she returned to Dunedin. Having been widowed and then inherited her father’s money, she was free to indulge her interests. She set off on a ‘prolonged tour in Britain and on the Continent of Europe’ after which she settled in Christchurch until her death in 1904. The oil portrait was no doubt an indulgence she could well afford at this time.
However, Alison Scott as a young wife and mother had experienced the same struggles and challenges as other colonial wives. Her good fortune in later life did not change her personality; she remained a well-liked and generous member of the community. As her obituary noted, ’She was a sympathetic and helpful neighbour even when her energies were taxed with the needs of her own large household. The wealth she inherited from her father only enabled her more fully to gratify a disposition that was always generous.’
She was buried in Milton, alongside her husband and four of their children who had predeceased her.
Mrs Alison Scott (née Langlands)