This lively watercolour was made shortly before Jane Welsh married Thomas Carlyle in 1826. During the forty years of their marriage, they both loved and frustrated each other. Beautiful and brilliant – she was nicknamed ‘the flower of Haddington’ – Jane employed her gifts mainly in letter writing rather than published work. After her death in 1866, Carlyle wrote ' I have no Portrait of my lost Darling; nothing but a Miniature (taken by Macleay shortly before our marriage); it has the fine sunny smile of her face, but wants the sharp delicacy of featuring'. Just four years earlier Jane had mentioned this picture in a letter, describing it as 'a memorial of the three happiest weeks I have lived for a long time'.