Cecile de Wentworth

Background

Cecile de Wentworth was born in New York City, probably between 1853 and 1870. Her maiden name was Smith. The names of her parents do not appear in the accounts of her life, but presumably she belonged to a Catholic family.

Education

She attended the Sacred Heart Convent in New York City. While still a young girl Cecilia, as she was then known, went to Paris to study art.

Career

He worked in Paris in the studios of Alexandre Cabanel and Edouard Detaille. She appears as an exhibitor in the catalogue of the Paris Salon of 1889 as Mme. C. -E. Wentworth, and for the next thirty years she regularly contributed to that annual exhibition portraits and occasional pictures with religious themes. She was made an officier d'académie in Paris in 1894. At the Universal Exposition in Paris in 1900 she received a bronze medal for her painting of Pope Leo XIII, who decorated her with the title of grand commander of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre and gave her the papal title of marchesa. In 1901 the French government conferred upon her the title of chevalier of the Légion d'Honneur, and she became an officier de l'instruction publique. She was one of the few women painters to have examples of their work purchased for the Musée National du Luxembourg. During the greater portion of her active years she maintained a studio at 15 Avenue des Champs Élysées in Paris, returning for occasional visits to the United States, of which she continued to be a citizen despite her many years' residence abroad. In 1931 her husband, who was also a holder of the papal title of marquis, died in Paris. Soon after that the marquise because of a reduced income removed to the Riviera, where she passed the rest of her life. She lived at Nice in very modest circumstances and at the time of her death there in the municipal hospital on August 28, 1933, it was reported that the American embassy in Paris forwarded money to cover her funeral expenses. Among her sitters were William Howard Taft, Theodore Roosevelt, Archbishop Michael A. Corrigan, John W. Mackay, Cardinal Ferrata, and Queen Alexandra of England. The portrait of Pope Leo XIII in the Vatican Museum in Rome, one of her bestknown, shows him in an attitude of upright alertness that was extremely characteristic. A portrait of Gen. John J. Pershing is in the Invalides Museum in Paris; one of Maj. -Gen. George B. McClellan is in the Metropolitan Museum in New York. She is further represented by "La Foi" in the Luxembourg in Paris, and by a portrait of a former president of the Senate in the Senate chamber in Paris.

Achievements

• Her portraits are noted for their admirable portrayal of character and a certain spontaneity of facial expression. Though she was one of the most prominent women portrait painters of the latter part of the nineteenth century, she was better known in France than in her native America. He was award winning portrait painter. His works exhibited at the Luxemborg Museum and Metropolitan Museum of Art. He was awarded papal Marchesa. She received medals at the National Exhibition at Tours, and at other exhibitions at Lyons and Turin, and had the title of officier of the order of Nichau Tftikar conferred upon her by Mohammed EuNacer Bacha-Bey.

Connections

She married Josiah Winslow Wentworth.

Spouse:

Josiah Winslow Wentworth