Louise Kinsella

Identity:

Louise was the daughter of the Irish-born American newspaper editor Thomas Kinsella (1832-1884) and his wife Elizabeth (Bess) née Lawless (b. 1833). In the 1875 census for the Brooklyn Ward, New York, his age is given as 44 and his wife's as 42 (they were born in County Wexford), and their children - all born in King's, New York - are listed as Hannah, aged 20, Frances aged 14, Margaret aged 12, Louisa aged 10, and Catherine aged 9.

Life:

She and her sisters were considered very beautiful. After attending a Catholic convent in Paris three of them stayed on, a popular focus of expatriate society. In the Spring of 1894 they rented a house at Giverny.

Louisa ('Louise') was described as 'golden-haired and dove-like but for sudden flashes.'

She posed to Whistler for Rose et vert: L'Iris - Portrait of Miss Kinsella y420 at intervals from 1894 to 1902. She attended Whistler's funeral in London in 1903.

William Rothenstein (1872-1945) made a drawing of Louisa, and Charles Conder (1868-1909) painted her several times, including in The Green Apple (Tate, 1894).

Louisa's sister Hannah married first Robert Treat Payne (1845-1906), and after his death, Alfred Pagelow, and died in Allenhurst, New Jersey, in 1933; she was survived by two of her sisters, Mrs Margaret Burton, in London, England, and Catherine (Katharine, Kate), the Marchesa Presbitero. The Marchesa inherited Whistler's portrait of her sister.

Bibliography:

1875 census and Passport application, Ancestry.com

Galbally, Anna, Charles Conder: the last Bohemian, Melbourne, 2004, p. 116.

Mrs Pagelow's obituary, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, New York, 2 July 1934, p. 13, obline.