Winnaretta Singer, a pale woman with curly hair tied back and wearing a long formal dress. She leans against a sculpture and rest her head on her hand. She looks bored.
“If you touch me, I’ll kill you!”
– Winnaretta Singer
Born on January 8, 1865, Winnaretta was the twentieth of twenty-four children fathered by Isaac Singer. Daughter to Singer’s second wife Isabella Eugénie Boyer, Winnaretta was one of Singer's legitimate children. She had full access to the fortune Singer had amassed during his development of sewing machines. She received every privilege that could be bought, and like her mother, she fell in love with art. She studied painting and became quite accomplished in the field, but her true passion lay in music. From a young age, she was surrounded by incredible musicians, who in turn surrounded her with incredible music.
When her father died in 1875, Winnaretta and her twenty-four siblings inherited a fortune. She moved with her mother in deeply artistic circles and she made many friends—among them Gabriel Fauré. It was through him that she found her role in the artistic world, becoming his benefactor.
Though she was artistically talented and trained in both music and painting, she was drawn to artistic groups more than to the creation of art.
This love was sparked by her mother, but the relationship between the two soon became more complicated when her mother remarried. Winnaretta’s step-father was violent, and as soon as Winnaretta was twenty-one she became financially independent. At the age of twenty-two, she solidified her complete independence by marrying.
She already understood that she was a lesbian, but the benefits of marriage to a man were too tempting to miss. It was the night of their wedding that Winnaretta clearly drew her boundaries. Standing on top of a closet and brandishing an umbrella, she declared:
“If you touch me, I’ll kill you!”
Even with these boundaries the marriage quickly became strained. The two were able to have the marriage annulled five years later as it was never consummated.
Only a year after the failure of this marriage she was approached by Count Robert de Montesquiou, who knew about her sexuality and as a gay man himself had an idea. He had a friend who was also a gay man and introduced the two, suggesting a lavender marriage. A lavender marriage is a marriage between two queer people who use the marriage to protect themselves from rumours or violence.
At the age of twenty-eight Winnaretta married Prince Edmond de Polignac, an amateur composer with a title but no money he was the perfect match for Winnaretta who had a lot of money but no title. It wasn’t long before the two realized they were more than two queer people supporting each other and became best friends.
Sharing a deep love of music and travelling, the two delighted in each other.
Where Edmond was a rather introverted sensitive man, Winnaretta was gregarious and together they amassed a large group of friends most of whom were also queer. Both of the two maintained romantic relationships outside of their marriage, some of Winnaretta’s more famous partners being Romaine Brooks, Olga de Meyer, Ethel Smyth, Renata Borgatti, Violet Trefusis, and Alvilde Chaplin.
This did not disrupt their love for each other though, as they kept working to create a home together that was a "temple of music."
In 1901, Edmund, unfortunately, died, leaving everything to Winnaretta. Honouring both her husband and her own desires, she invested continually in the arts, supporting artists financially as well as emotionally at times, Winnaretta was fiercely protective of her friends and pushed them through their failures as well as helping them to success.
Among the artists she helped were Chabrier, d'Indy, Debussy, Fauré, Rave, Marcel Proust, Igor Stravinsky, Erik Satie, Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc, Jean Françaix, Kurt Weill, Germaine Tailleferre, Manuel de Falla, Wanda Landowska, Isadora Duncan, Jean Cocteau, Claude Monet, Sergei Diaghilev, Colette, Nadia Boulanger, Clara Haskil, Dinu Lipatti, Arthur Rubinstein, Vladimir Horowitz, Armande de Polignac, Ethel Smyth, Le Corbusier, and Adela Maddison.
Her money didn’t go exclusively to the arts though, she supported the sciences as well. Though she was against the war, she was deeply invested in sending medical help to the soldiers in World War 1. At one point, working with Marie Curie to acquire medical supplies and gathering her rich friend's limousines to use as war ambulances.
She was also a leader in the creation of public housing, using her money to provide well-maintained places for people to live at low prices, specifically focusing on restoring buildings to house abused women and their children.
Her personal exploits often took up the spotlight though: her annulment, her openness as a lesbian, and her many relationships with married women. One of the more dramatic moments of her story involving a husband bursting into her dining room yelling:
“If you are the man you pretend to be, come and fight a duel tomorrow at the Lido!”
Though the duel did not happen, and the things the man stole and threw into the river were recovered the next day, the story spread.
She eventually moved from France to London during World War II. She continued to use her connections to throw charity events. Winnaretta, unfortunately, died in late 1943 during an attack on the city. At the time those who knew her in France were unable to publicly mourn her passing. The art she collected was largely donated after her death and much of her estate used to continue funding projects within the arts and sciences.
While writing this article, it was hard not to notice that many people with more money then Winnaretta Singer have used legacies like hers to excuse their place in society. Sitting upon unprecedented mountains of money, they are justified under the theory that they might chance to give some of it away someday.
Looking at Winnaretta, she is their ideal: the person born into wealth who gave much of it to support artists, public initiatives, and research. Many beloved pieces of art would likely not exist without her intervention, and that is a beautiful thing.
What is strikingly less beautiful is that in reality, the charity of the wealthy in our time is a lie. Not only because it is so often a small fraction of their enormous wealth, nor that their fortunes come at the expense of workers. It is a lie because they do not donate when they say they do.
On April 15, 2019, in the city of Paris that Winnaretta loved so dearly, the Notre Dame caught fire. All around the world billionaires came forward, pledging millions each to help rebuild. They lied. The money they promised on Twitter never came. Not one of them followed through.
Within the United States of America, a country known for its wealth disparity, the charities that exist are often built and run by the billionaires who fund them. The definition of charity stretches to encompass organizations made with the explicit purpose of setting up base in Universities to either pay up and comers to publicly support a far-right ideology, or pressure the University board to employ less qualified applicants because of their right-wing beliefs. These charitable donations give back to the billionaires who fund them in tax breaks and political influence but do little else.
Winnaretta Singer was exceptional because she was an exception. While imperfect, she is an easy woman to admire, and it is easier still to want to see her in our own times. But it is important not to lose sight of the present for want of the idealized past.
History can at times give perspective, insight, and precedent, and other times it can give us a story of a woman who loved music, art, and women.
[Disclaimer: some of the sources may contain triggering material]
Born January 8: Winnaretta Singer. (2011, January 10). Band of Thebes. Retrieved from https://bandofthebes.typepad.com/bandofthebes/2011/01/born-january-8-winnaretta-singer.html
Chakrabortty, A. (2019, July 18). The lesson from the ruins of Notre Dame: don’t rely on billionaires. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/18/ruins-notre-dame-billionaires-french-philanthropy
Dixon, K. (2018, March 26). The lavender marriage of Oldway’s Winnaretta and the Prince. We Are South Devon. Retrieved from https://wearesouthdevon.com/lavender-marriage-oldways-winnaretta-prince/
Mayer, J. (2016). Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right. Doubleday.
Portrait Gallery. (October 2015). Palazzo Contarini-Polignac. Retrieved from http://palazzocontarinipolignac.com/Winnaretta#Portraits
Ring, T. (2015, January 29). Who the F Is … Arts Patron Winnaretta Singer? Pride. Retrieved from https://www.pride.com/who-f/2015/01/29/who-f-%E2%80%A6-arts-patron-winnaretta-singer
Ring, T. (2017, March 24). Women Who Paved the Way: Arts Patron Winnaretta Singer. Advocate. Retrieved from https://www.advocate.com/women/2017/3/24/women-who-paved-way-arts-patron-winnaretta-singer
Rutledge, S. (2020, January 9). #BornThisDay: Woman-Lover & Arts Patron, Winnaretta Singer. The WOW Report. Retrieved from https://worldofwonder.net/bornthisday-woman-lover-arts-patron-winnaretta-singer%EF%BB%BF/
Virgilio, S. D. (n.d.). Winnaretta Singer. Parisian Music Salon. Retrieved from https://parisianmusicsalon.wordpress.com/winnaretta-singer/
World Heritage Encyclopedia. Winnaretta Singer. Project Gutenberg. Retrieved from http://self.gutenberg.org/articles/Winnaretta_Singer