Lady Margaret Brodie Stewart

Margaret, Lady Herschel (née Brodie Stewart; 1810–1884) was a British botanical artist and hostess. While she was in Cape Colony, she and her husband made over a hundred botanical paintings of wild flowers, which they brought back to Europe for study. Her husband was one of the leading scientists of Victorian Britain.

Life Margaret Brodie Stewart was born in 1810. Her father was Alexander Stewart DD, a Scottish Presbyterian minister and Gaelic scholar. This led Margaret to seek out a friendship with John's aunt the astronomer Caroline Herschel, where Margaret sought to learn about Caroline's scientific career. They arrived in Cape Town on 15 January 1834 and chose to live at Feldhausen, an old estate in Claremont, a suburb of Cape Town, where her husband set up a private telescope. He collaborated with Thomas Maclear, the Astronomer Royal at the Cape of Good Hope and the two families became close friends.

Herschel and her husband between 1834 and 1838 produced 131 botanical illustrations showing Cape flora. They used a camera lucida to obtained outlines of the specimens and Margaret dealt particularly with the details. Their portfolio had been intended as a personal record, and despite the lack of floral dissections in the paintings, their accuracy made them valuable. 112 of their flower studies were collected and published as Flora Herscheliana in 1996.

When HMS Beagle called at Cape Town, Captain Robert FitzRoy and the young naturalist Charles Darwin visited Herschel on 3 June 1836. Later on, Darwin would be influenced by Herschel's writings in developing his theory advanced in The Origin of Species.

They returned to England in 1838, where her husband became a baronet, of Slough in the County of Buckingham and she became Lady Margaret Herschel.

Death and legacy Lady Margaret Herschel died in 1884. Besides the posthumus publication Flora Herscheliana, some of her letters are in Trinity College

Private life She had married her cousin John Herschel on 3 March 1829 Amelia Herschel (1841–1926) Francisca Herschel (1846–1932) Constance Anne Herschel (1855–20 June 1939)