111973

Mrs Bronson Griscom, née Sophie Margaretta Gay 1934

Half-length in profile to the left, head turned to the viewer, wearing a pale yellow dress and organza stole round her bare shoulders, a ring on her left hand, and drop earrings

Oil [support and dimensions unknown]

Inscribed lower left: de László / N.Y. 1934. I.

Juley negative 058566

Sitters’ Book II, opp. f. 77: Sophie Gay Griscom 27th December, 1933 / New York

De László first met Bronson Griscom and his wife at the home of Count László Széchenyi [4236], Hungarian Minister in Washington, D.C., during his fifth visit to America in 1933.^[1] The portrait was painted in New York, and the artist recorded sittings on 26 and 27 December 1933 and 2 January 1934.^[2] The artist was pleased with his “sympathetic” sitter and recorded in his diary that she was six months pregnant with her second child, though this does not appear on canvas.^[3] 

Sophie Margaretta Gay was born 28 April 1907 in Boston, Massachusetts, the eldest daughter of William Otis Gay (1866-1946), a banker, and his wife Anna Margaretta Dumaresq (1874-1949). She attended Miss Chapin’s School for Girls in Manhattan and later spent two winter terms at school in Paris.^[4] 

On 5 June 1931, she married Bronson Winthrop Griscom, son of Colonel Lloyd Carpenter Griscom (1872-1959), former American Ambassador to Italy, and his wife Elizabeth Duer Bronson (1877-1914). They toured Europe during their honeymoon and visited Sophie’s uncle, the painter Walter Gay (1856-1937), at Château Le Breau, near Fontainebleau. Griscom was employed by the New York Herald Tribune and after their return to New York they took up residence at 580 Park Avenue.^[5] There were two children of the marriage: Frederick Bronson Griscom (born 1932), and Else Dumaresq Griscom (born 1934).

Sophie died 8 March 1985 and is buried next to her husband at Oak Lawn Cemetery in Fairfield, Connecticut.

LITERATURE:

•László, Philip de, 1933-1934 diary, private collection

MD 2021