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Winnaretta Singer de Polignac
(January 8, 1865 - November 26, 1943) U.S.A.

Winnaretta Singer

Art patron and Philantropist

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Princesse de Polignac, born Winnaretta Singer, was the 20th child of sewing machine magnate Isaac Merritt Singer; her mother was Paris-born Isabelle Boyer, who, according to legend, was the model for Frédéric Bartholdi's Statue of Liberty.

Winnaretta SingerBorn in "The Castle", an enormous building made of solid granite located in Yonkers, New York, and raised in a modern mansion/playground dubbed "Wigwam" in the small English town of Paignton, Winnaretta was not the most likely figure to become the matron of the aristocratic salon in Belle Epoque Paris.

But after the death of her father, she inherited a substantial part of the Singer Sewing Machine fortune, making her a millionaire at the age of eighteen.

In 1893 she married to Prince Edmond de Polignac, an amateur composer. Given that both were attracted to members of the same sex, but nonetheless desired to maintain the proper protocol, Edmond and Winnaretta agreed to a mariage blanc .

Her marriage brought her into contact with the most elite strata of French society. After Edmond's death in 1901, she used her fortune to benefit the arts, science, and letters. Behind the façade of her marriage, Winnaretta engaged in lesbian affairs with some of the most famous frequenters of Left Bank circles.

After Edmond died, her relationships were carried out beneath the cloak of respectability. When traveling with a lover, she would often insist that other friends, or even the woman's husband, travel with them to maintain the image of propriety.

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