Constance Whitney Warren (1888-1948)

She was born at 28 East 64th Street, New York City, to a wealthy, artistic family. She was a niece of the celebrated architects Whitney Warren and Lloyd Elliot Warren (founder of the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design in New York City), and, a first cousin of the eccentric Edith Starr Miller. She began her career sketching and designing posters before studying under the bronze sculptor Pierre-Louis Peyranne in Paris where she met her husband who shared her love of horses. In New York City in 1912 she married Guy, Comte (and from 1923 the Marquis) de Lasteyrie, a great-great-grandson of the American hero, the Marquis de Lafayette. They lived between Paris and Lafayette's historic old chateau, Chateau de la Grange, and during World War I she chauffeured English staff officers around Paris and to/from the Front. She divorced her husband in 1920 but she stayed in Paris and made her home at 40 Avenue de la Bourdonnais, focusing on her art. She became a well-respected bronze sculptor and in 1921 she was one of just eight American sculptors whose work was included in the Paris Salon of that year, placing her next to Katharine Fuller, Edward Stanford, and Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney.

She exhibited regularly at the Salon and received several Honorable Mentions - horses and dogs remained her favorite subjects. Today she is known for various sculptures including the Texas Cowboy Monument at the Texas State Capitol in Austin (gifted to the state by her father); the Tribute to Range Riders at the Oklahoma State Capitol in Oklahoma City; the Lariat Cowboy in Phoenix, Arizona; and Hackney No. 1, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. A smaller scale representation of The Cowboy, which won her an Honorable Mention at the 1921 Paris Salon now belongs to the collection of the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Sadly, she became mentally unwell and from 1930 until her death in 1948 she was confined to an institution for the insane in Beacon, New York.