Edith Stuyvesant Vanderbilt
Birthname: Dresser
Nationality: American
Date of birth: 1873
Date of death: 1958
Category: collector
Identity:
Edith Stuyvesant Vanderbilt, née Dresser, married George Washington Vanderbilt in Paris in 1898. After his death in 1914, she married Senator P. G. Gerry of Providence, R.I.
Life:
In 1898 George Vanderbilt commissioned from Whistler a portrait of Edith, Ivoire et or: Portrait de Madame Vanderbilt y515. She sat for him in Paris in June 1899. In January 1901, Whistler proposed to return Vanderbilt's cheque. However, in February 1901 Vanderbilt wrote to Whistler that his wife was ready to sit for him again and the portrait was finished and delivered by May 1902. At Vanderbilt's death in 1914 the work was bequeathed to Edith, along with Nocturne: Battersea y120, Gold and Brown y462, Portrait of George W. Vanderbilt y481.
Bibliography:
Young, Andrew McLaren, Margaret F. MacDonald, Robin Spencer, and Hamish Miles, The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler, New Haven and London, 1980 ; MacDonald, Margaret F., James McNeill Whistler. Drawings, Pastels and Watercolours. A Catalogue Raisonné, New Haven and London, 1995 .
