Connstance MacDonald Gilchrist
Birthname: Gilchrist
Alias: Connie Gilchrist
Nationality: British
Date of birth: 23 January 1865
Place of birth: Agartown, Surrey
Date of death: 1946
Category: model
Identity:
Connie's parents were Matilda Maria Gilchrist, née Potter, and David G., engine smith, St Pancras district. She married Edmond Walter Fitz-Maurice, seventh Earl of Orkney.
Life:
She joined the company of the Gaiety Theatre at the age of 12 as a skipping rope dancer. A highly successful career as dancer and actress in comedy and vaudeville ended in 1892 when she married the seventh Earl of Orkney, and retired to Leighton Buzzard.
From the age of six she posed regularly for Frederick Leighton (1830-1896), culminating as a whole procession of dancing girls in his Daphnephoria, which was shown at the Royal Academy in 1876 (Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight). She also posed for Leighton's Winding the Skein, ca 1878, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, as well as for John Lavery (1856-1941) and George Francis (Frank) Miles (1852-1894).
She posed to Whistler for two oil paintings, Harmony in Yellow and Gold: The Gold Girl - Connie Gilchrist y190) and The Blue Girl: Portrait of Connie Gilchrist y207.
Four drawings of Connie Gilchrist by Whistler are recorded: Sketch of 'Harmony in Yellow and Gold: The Gold Girl - Connie Gilchrist' m0709, Sketch of 'Harmony in Yellow and Gold: The Gold Girl - Connie Gilchrist' m0710, Sketch of 'Harmony in Yellow and Gold: The Gold Girl - Connie Gilchrist' m0711 and Connie Gilchrist m0712.
Connie Gilchrist also posed for Frederick Leighton's Winding the Skein, ca 1878, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, as well as for John Lavery and Frank Miles. Several early photographs of Connie by Elliot & Fry (National Portrait Gallery, NPG x197108) and by Alexander Bassano (NPG x127999-128001) show her at the time she posed for Whistler and Leighton.
Bibliography:
George R. Sims, My Life. Sixty Years' Recollections of Bohemian London, London, 1917, p. 21; L. and R. Ormond, Lord Leighton, New Haven and London, 1975, p. 133; Young, Andrew McLaren, Margaret F. MacDonald, Robin Spencer, and Hamish Miles, The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler, New Haven and London, 1980 ; National Portrait Gallery website at
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