PAOLO PETROVICH TROUBETZKOY (AFTER) Mrs. Harry Payne Whitney (Gertrude Vanderbilt).
Plaster painted in bronze. 564 mm; 22 1/4 inches (height). With the artist's name and date of the original bronze, 1910, incised on the upper part of the base. Produced by Alva Museum Replicas, New York, 1976, with the stamp and date on the base verso.
Troubetzkoy (1866-1938) was an Italian-born to a Russian aristocratic family, a self-taught Impressionist sculptor who, like his contemporaries and fellow artists such as John Singer Sargent, Anders Zorn and Auguste Rodin, was well-known for his European and American high society portraits. He was invited to exhibit at the Hispanic and Numismatic Society in New York in 1911 and, with the outbreak of World War I, decided to remain in New York throughout the war and beyond, returning to northern Italy in 1932 for the remainder of his career. He exhibited widely in the United States and became familiarly acquainted with the elite of Hollywood and the film industry during the heyday of the 1910s.
Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875-1942) was an American sculptor, art patron and collector, and founder in 1931 of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. She was a prominent social figure and hostess, who was born into the wealthy Vanderbilt family and married into the Whitney family.
