LONDON.- Daisy Fellowes was a fashion icon and the living embodiment of Thirties chic, celebrated for her beauty and style, and her Paris editorship of Harper’s Bazaar. French artist Jacques-Emile Blanche painted three portraits of her in 1912 and 1914. Two of the paintings are now in public collections in Paris; the third was the only one to enter Fellowes’ own collection. It is this portrait which will be presented for sale at Sotheby’s in London on 10 December 2014. Having remained with her descendants until now, it comes to auction with an estimate of £50,000-70,000 and will be offered in a sale of 19th Century European Paintings.

The young Marguerite Decazes de Glücksberg, later Daisy Fellowes (1890-1962) astonished Blanche in 1912 by buying the artist’s painting of the great Russian ballet dancer Vaslav Nijinsky performing a Siamese dance. Their meeting led to several sittings for the portraits, in which Daisy is shown wearing the same Paul Poiret dress. The 1914 portrait in Sotheby’s sale is Blanche’s most informal and playful depiction of her.

One of the 20th century’s most stylish and glamorous women, Daisy was born into a world of wealth and nobility, the granddaughter of the sewing machine magnate Isaac Singer. Following the death of her first husband Prince Jean de Broglie in 1918, she married the Hon. Reginald Fellowes, banker cousin of Winston Churchill, thereafter taking the name for which she is best known. Daisy was arguably the most prominent patron of couturiers Elsa Schiaparelli, whose ‘shocking pink’ was created for her, and Chanel, whose latest designs she adorned with magnificent jewels by Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels and Boivin. Press reporters and fashion magazines kept a watchful eye to see which new jewel she would be wearing to stun the world, so famous was her collection.

Daisy’s lavish and hedonistic lifestyle was divided between London, Paris and Cap Martin in the South of France, and she entertained guests including the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and Cecil Beaton on her yacht, Sister Anne. Beaton’s photographs of Daisy are further stunning visual records of her beauty and style.