Wentworth, Cecile de (c. 1853–1933)

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Wentworth, Cecile de (c. 1853–1933)

American portrait painter . Name variations: Mme C.-E. Wentworth; Mme C.E. Wentworth; Cecile Smith de Wentworth. Born Cecilia Smith in New York City about 1853; died in Nice, France, on August 28, 1933; educated in convent schools; studied painting in Paris with Alexandre Cabanel and Edouard Detaille; married Josiah Winslow Wentworth, around 1887 (died 1931).

Appeared in the exhibition catalogue of the Paris Salon (1889); won bronze medal for portrait of Pope Leo XIII at the Exposition Universelle in Paris (1900); received title of Grand Commander of the Order of the Holy Sepulcher and the papal title of Marchesa from the pope; awarded title of Chevalier of the Legion of Honor (1901).

Cecile de Wentworth was born Cecilia Smith into a large Roman Catholic family in New York City around 1853. Educated in convent schools, she journeyed to Paris in 1886 to study painting in the studios of the academic painter Alexandre Cabanel and his compatriot Edouard Detaille. Although Wentworth never surrendered her American citizenship, France became her adopted homeland and the place where she achieved her greatest fame as a portrait painter.

Within a few years of her arrival in France, Cecile married Josiah Winslow Wentworth and also appeared in her first exhibit at the Paris Salon under her married name. For the next 30 years, she showed her works at the salon and maintained a studio on the Champs Élysées. Her ability to produce lively, natural expressions in her portraits made her a coveted portraitist whose roster of clients eventually included American presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, England's Queen Alexandra of Denmark (commissioned by the king of Spain), and General John J. Pershing, whose portrait hung in the Versailles Museum. Her most famous portrait was of Pope Leo XIII, displayed in the Vatican Museum in Rome, which won her a bronze medal at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900. The pope showed his gratitude by decorating her with the title of Grand Commander of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre, and conferring on her the papal title of Marchesa.

Wentworth achieved other significant honors in her lifetime; France made her a chevalier of the Legion of Honor in 1901, and she was one of the few women artists to have works purchased by the Luxembourg Museum. Her art found homes in several other prestigious museums, including the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, and the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C. But the death of her husband in 1931 virtually bankrupted Wentworth despite her fame, and she was forced to move from her Paris home to cheaper quarters in Nice. She died two years later in the municipal hospital there; the American embassy in Paris helped cover her funeral expenses.