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Pamela Beryl Harriman (20 March 1920 – 5 February 1997), also known as Pamela Churchill Harriman, was an English-born American political activist for the Democratic Party, diplomat, and socialite.
She was a descendant of the Earls of Leicester and Ilchester and the Dukes of Atholl. She was a first cousin of Lavinia Fitzalan-Howard, Duchess of Norfolk. She was also a third cousin, once removed, of Angus Ogilvy, husband of Queen Elizabeth's cousin, Alexandra of Kent. She was also a fourth cousin, once removed, of Sarah, Duchess of York. She married three important and powerful men, her first husband being Randolph Churchill, the son of prime minister Winston Churchill. Her only child, Winston Churchill, was named after his famous grandfather. Biography
Pamela Digby was born in Farnborough, Hampshire, England, the daughter of Edward Digby, 11th Baron Digby, and his wife, Constance Pamela Alice, the daughter of Henry Campbell Bruce, 2nd Baron Aberdare. She was educated by governesses in the ancestral home at Minterne Magna in Dorset, along with her three younger siblings. Her great-great aunt was the nineteenth-century adventurer and courtesan Jane Digby (1807–1881), notorious for her exotic travels and scandalous personal life. Pamela was to follow in her ancestor's footsteps, and has been called "the 20th-century's most influential courtesan".
Raised amid acres of Dorset farmland and woods, from an early age Pamela was a very good horsewoman. She competed at shows at the International Olympia, Royal Bath and West Show, and local shows at Dorchester and Melplash. She show-jumped a tiny pony called Stardust that did a clear round at Olympia when every fence was above the animal's withers.
At the age of seventeen, she was sent to a Munich boarding school for six months. While there she was introduced to Adolf Hitler by her friend Unity Mitford, one of the six Mitford sister.. She subsequently went to Paris, taking some classes at the Sorbonne. By 1937, she had returned to Britain.
In 1939, while working at the Foreign Office in London doing French-to-English translations, Pamela met Randolph Churchill, the son of Winston Churchill, and a womaniser and alcoholic, desperate for a wife, having already proposed to eight women in the space of two weeks. Randolph proposed to her on the very evening they met, and they were married on 4 October 1939.
Two days after Randolph Churchill took his seat in the House of Commons, their son Winston was born. Shortly after giving birth, Pamela and the newborn were photographed by Cecil Beaton for Life magazine, its first cover of a mother with baby.
In February 1941, Randolph was sent to Cairo for military service, where he accrued large gambling debts.
During her marriage to Randolph Churchill, she had romantic involvements with several men of prominence and wealth such as: W. Averell Harriman, who much later became her third husband; Edward R. Murrow; and John Hay "Jock" Whitney. Eventually, Pamela filed for divorce in December 1945 on the grounds that he had deserted her for three years.
After her divorce from Randolph Churchill, Pamela moved to Paris and in 1948 began her five-year-long affair with Gianni Agnelli. She described this as the happiest period of her life. She converted to Catholicism, and obtained an annulment of her marriage with Randolph Churchill from the Catholic Church, in the hope to marry Gianni Agnelli.
Agnelli, however, did not have the same intention. In 1952, Pamela found him with a young woman, Anne-Marie d'Estainville. And one year later, in November of 1953, Gianni Agnelli married Italian Prrincess Marella Caracciolo di Castagneto. Pamela Churchill ended the affair.
Her next significant relationship was with Baron Ellie de Rothschild, who was married. He supported her financially, and she was schooled in art history and wine-making during this clandestine and short relationship. During this time she also entertained an affair with the writer Maurice Druon and with the shipping magnate Stavros Niarchos.
Other notable men Pamela Churchill was involved with after her divorce from Churchill included Prince Aly Khan, William S. Paley, Alfonso de Portago,etc.
In 1959, Pamela Churchill met Broadway producer Leland Hayward, who was still married to Slim Hawks. She moved to New York City.
The day Hayward's divorce was final, she became the fifth Mrs. Hayward with the ceremony taking place in Carson City, Nevada, on 4 May 1960. Hayward was rich with income from his productions, notably the very successful The Sound of Music, allowing for a lavish and luxurious lifestyle mostly between their residence in New York City and the Westchester County estate "Haywire." Pamela Hayward stayed with her husband until his death on 18 March 1971.
The day after Hayward's funeral, Pamela arranged to resume her acquaintance with her former lover, Harriman, then 79 years old and recently widowed.
They were married on 27 September 1971. As Pamela Churchill Harriman she became a United States citizen in the same year. With this marriage, her social focus was moved to Washington, D.C., where he owned a townhouse in Georgetown from which they entertained many notable people. Harriman, a railroad heir, was wealthy and also bought an estate in Virginia and a private jet. With Harriman's involvement and links in the Democratic Party, her political career began. In 1980, the National Women's Democratic Club named her "Woman of the Year". In 1986, when W. Averell Harriman died, Pamela stayed at his side, remaining Pamela Harriman and inherited 115 million dollars.
In 1993, U.S. President Bill Clinton of United States appointed her as Ambassador to France.
Pamela Churchill Harriman died on 5 February 1997 at the American Hospital, Neuilly-sur-Seine, after suffering a cerebral haemorrhage while swimming at the Paris Ritz one day earlier.
The morning after her death, President Jacques Chirac of France placed the Grand Cross of the Légion d'honneur on her flag-draped coffin. She was the first female foreign diplomat to receive this honour. President Bill Clinton, in further recognition of her contributions and significance, dispatched Air Force One to return her body to the US and spoke at her funeral at the Washington National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., mentioning her public service in glowing terms. Pamela Churchill Harriman was buried 14 February 1997 at Arden, the former Harriman estate in New York. Further interest
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name: Pierre-Paul Prud'hon birth place: Cluny France birth date: 4 April 1758 zodiac sign: Aries death place: Paris France death date: 16 February 1823 BiographiePierre-Paul Prud'hon nait à Cluny, le 4 avril 1758, septième et dernier enfant de Christophe Prudon, maître tailleur de pierre. A dix-neuf ans, Prud'hon épouse le 17 février 1778, Jeanne Pennet, la fille d'un notaire. Ce mariage ne sera pas très heureux mais il en aura un fils, Jean, né en 1778, qui deviendra aussi peintre et graveur. Il poursuit ses études, et vient, en 1780, à Paris où il est adressé au graveur Wille par son compatriote le baron de Joursanvault, qui est aussi son bienfaiteur, et pour lequel il illustre une Méthode de basse et une Méthode de blason. En 1783, revenu à Dijon, il y concourt bientôt pour le Prix de Rome régional des états de Bourgogne. Prud'hon part pour Rome où il arrive le 3 janvier 1783 avec son camarade Pierre Petitot. Cependant, malgré ses amis, malgré la sollicitude du cardinal de Bernis, de Canova, il y vit dans la solitude, dans la mélancolie, et parfois dans la gêne. Il voyage en Italie de 1784 à 1788. Revenu à Paris, il acquiert une certaine renommée avec quelques tableaux allégoriques repris dans des gravures, mais son amitié avec Robespierre l’oblige à quitter Paris et il part vivre en Franche-Comté de 1794 à 1796. Il vit alors de portraits et d’illustrations pour l’éditeur et imprimeur Pierre Didot. Il est élu membre associé de l’Institut en 1796 et revient alors à Paris où sa carrière prend un nouvel essor. Le Louvre met à sa disposition un atelier pour réaliser La Sagesse et la Vérité descendant sur la terre de 1798 à 1799. Il peint également pour l’hôtel du financier de Lannoy, des décors allégoriques qui sont beaucoup appréciés, et des plafonds au Louvre. Le gouvernement lui attribue un atelier à la Sorbonne où sa femme Jeanne vient le harceler. Pour lui échapper, le peintre demande la protection de Vivant Denon, directeur des musées. En 1808 il peint La Justice et la Vengeance Divine poursuivant le Crime. Il est nommé chevalier de la Légion d'honneur le 22 octobre 1808. Il rompt définitivement avec son épouse acariâtre et se lie à l'artiste-peintre Constance Mayer, sa collaboratrice, et s'installe avec elle. Il fait le portrait de l'impératrice Joséphine, (conservé à Paris au musée du Louvre), et, en 1811, nommé professeur de dessin de la souveraine, il fait le portrait du petit Roi de Rome, présenté au Salon de 1812. Il est élu membre de l'Académie des beaux-arts, au fauteuil no 3 de la section Peinture, succédant à François-André Vincent, en 1816. Le 26 mai 1821, Constance Mayer, dépressive, se tue, la douleur de Prud'hon est profonde. Il termine le tableau qu'elle a laissé inachevé, Une famille malheureuse, et l'expose au Salon de 1822. Il meurt l'année suivante et il est inhumé à Paris au cimetière du Père-Lachaise. Il est apprécié par Stendhal, Balzac, Delacroix, Millet et Baudelaire pour la qualité de son clair-obscur et son réalisme subtil. Plusieurs de ses œuvres furent gravées par son confrère Jacques-Louis Copia, tandis qu'Antoine François Gelée fut médaillé au Salon de 1842 pour son interprétation du tableau La Justice et la Vengeance Divine poursuivant le Crime. BiographyPierre-Paul Prud'hon (April 4, 1758 – February 16, 1823) was a French Romantic painter and draughtsman best known for his allegorical paintings and portraits such as Madame Georges Anthony and Her Two Sons (1796). Notably, he painted a portrait of each of Napoleon's two wives. He was an early influence on Théodore Géricault. Pierre-Paul Prud'hon was born in Cluny, Saône-et-Loire, France. He received his artistic training in the French provinces and went to Italy when he was twenty-six years old to continue his education. On his return to Paris, he found work decorating some private mansions. His work for wealthy Parisians led him to be held in high esteem at Napoleon's court. His painting of Josephine portrays her not as an Empress, but as a lovely, attractive woman, which led some to think that he might have been in love with her. After the divorce of Napoleon and Josephine, he was also employed by Napoleon' s second wife Marie-Louise. Prud'hon was at times clearly influenced by Neo-classicism, at other times by Romanticism. Appreciated by other artists and writers such as Stendhal, Delacroix, Millet and Baudelaire for his chiaroscuro and convincing realism, he is probably most famous for his Crucifixion (1822, Louvre), which he painted for St. Etienne's Cathedral in Metz. The young Théodore Géricault had painted copies of work by Prud'hon, whose "thunderously tragic pictures" include his masterpiece, Justice and Divine Vengeance Pursuing Crime, where oppressive darkness and the compositional base of a naked, sprawled corpse obviously anticipate Géricault's painting The Raft of the Medusa. External links:"The great danger for an American woman married to a Frenchman is to become too French. To assimilate too much of another nationality weakens you. Though on the surface I might not seem to be 100 percent American, I have tried to remain as shaggy inside as possible." Biography of Pauline de Rothschild
She was born Pauline Potter at 10 rue Octave Feuillet in the Paris neighborhood of Passy, to wealthy expatriate American parents of Protestant background. Her mother was Gwendolen Cary, a great-grand-niece of Thomas Jefferson, Potter was a member of several families that were prominent in the American South since the 17th century.
In 1930, in Baltimore, Maryland, Pauline Potter married Charles Carroll Fulton Leser (1900–1949), a grandson of one of the city's leading newspaper publishers. He was also an alcoholic and a homosexual. Soon after their marriage they moved to Majorca, Spain, but they separated in 1934, and divorced in 1939.
After she and Leser separated, Pauline Potter was romantically involved with a number of prominent men, including Paul-Henri Spaak (a Prime Minister of Belgium), American diplomat Elim O'Shaughnessy (1907-1966), French horticultural heir André Levesque de Vilmorin (1907-1987), Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovitch Romanov of Russia, and producer-director Jed Harris. For a period of years she also was the lover of Isabelle Kemp, an heiress to a New York drug-store and real-estate fortune.
In the early 1930s, Pauline Potter worked as a personal shopper in New York City, acting as a fashion advisor to wealthy socialites too busy to shop or too unsure of their personal style. Later, after moving to Spain with her first husband, Pauline operated dress shops on Majorca. She also worked for the couturier Elsa Schiaparelli in London and Paris and often was seen in society columns dressed in the firm's latest creations.
In the early 1940s, Pauline Potter and a friend, Louise Macy, a former editor of Harper's Bazaar, opened Macy-Potter, a short-lived fashion house, in New York City. The firm was bankrolled by a monetary settlement from Macy's former lover, millionaire John Hay Whitney, who had left her to marry Betsey Cushing, a former daughter-in-law of President Franklin Roosevelt. Though Macy-Potter's first (and only) collection was a critical and financial disaster, Potter went on to design a collection for Marshall Field and later to direct the custom-fashion division of Hattie Carnegie, the New York fashion company, succeeding Jean Louis, who left in 1943 to become chief fashion designer for Columbia Pictures.
Pauline remained at Hattie Carnegie for nearly a decade and was known professionally as Mrs. Fairfax Potter. Among her clients were the Duchess of Windsor, automotive heiress Thelma Chrysler Foy, actress Gertrude Lawrence, actress Ina Claire, and prominent others. She also designed the women's costumes for John Huston's Broadway 1946 production of No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre, starring Ruth Ford and Annabella. The gown she designed for Ford is in the collection of the Museum of the City of New York.
Potter also worked briefly as an uncredited fashion model. One assignment for Harper's Bazaar had her posing in the latest Grecian-style gowns for the photographer Louise Dahl-Wolfe.
On 8 April 1954, Pauline Potter became the second wife of Baron Philippe de Rothschild, the owner of the fabled French winery Château Mouton Rothschild.
This second marriage transformed her, not only from Pauline Potter the stylish woman to Baronesse Pauline de Rothschild the style icon.
All of her early years of modelling, styling, selling and designing clothes had developed and nourished her sense of style, and now, as a Rothschild, she had the means to acquire and wrap herself in cloths of her style, the couturiers like Balenciaga, Courreges and Saint Laurent who are able to accommodate her needs, the venues to show, and the presses and photographers to immortalise "le style Pauline".
In more than a decade, she transformed herself into one of the most elegant women in the world, and in 1969, she achieved the highest honour a society lady could have: She was admitted to the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame, the only woman that year, alongside elegant men like Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Cary Grant, and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.
But "le style Pauline" was much more than how she dressed, or how she carried herself, it would increasingly mean the way how she decorated her houses in Paris, London, and Bordeaux, Chateau de Mouton.
Baron Philippe de Rothschild, Pauline's second husband, a descendant of the Rothschild banking dynasty, was a race-car driver, a screenwriter, a playwright, a theatrical producer, a film producer, a poet, a wine maker, and a famed playboy. In fact, Pauline was only one of his mistresses for many years before their marriage, but after they got married, the Baron read, wrote and translated poetry with his wife, and provided her with a stage--Chateau de Mouton, for a woman of taste, energy and determination like Pauline, to act out the best role in her life.
With the help of her husband, Pauline de Rothschild renovated the war ruined estate of Rothschild in Bordeaux into one of the best wine museums in the world. A big project that took years, it showed her taste more than all the dresses she worn during those years.
If Chateau de Mouton which was designed as museum was Pauline's grand stage given to her by her husband, where family history as well as culture heritage needed needed to be considered, then their apartment in Paris and flat in London were more like her playground, like Marie Antoinette's Petit Trianon, where she can indulge much more freely her intimate and personal taste.
Pauline de Rothschild died on 8 March 1976, of a heart attack in the lobby of the Biltmore Hotel, in Santa Barbara, California. She previously had been diagnosed with breast cancer and had undergone open-heart surgery for a deteriorated valve in 1975. Rothschild's health problems were exacerbated by Marfan's syndrome, a genetic abnormality.
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