Frances Sherburne (Watts) White (1852-1927)

She was a granddaughter of the conspicuous shipping merchant Henry Grinnell, a grandniece of Robert Bowne Minturn, and her father - a great-grandson of Lord Stirling - was a scion of several of New York's oldest families. She grew up at 27 East 20th Street in New York City until after the U.S. Civil War when her family moved permanently to their villa in Nice in the South of France. In 1877, her portrait (pictured) was painted in Paris by her friend, John Singer Sargent, which the painter's father described as Sargent's "first serious work, his, as yet, 'opus magnum'." Her particularly well-executed pose suggestive of both self-confidence and inner tension captured the attention of the critics. It was Sargent's first Salon admission, and had been made with the Salon's jury very much in mind. Fanny and Sargent remained close friends throughout their lives. They kept up a regular correspondence and she visited him whenever she came to London. It was Sargent who gave her away when she was eventually married in 1907 at Westminster in London to Col. Frederick White, brother of the famous singer/composer Maude Valérie White, and Sargent presented her with the sketch of another portrait as a wedding present. Fanny died in Surrey (England) and was buried in Cannes (France).