MANCHESTER, Duchess of (Consuelo Yznaga)

Consuelo Yznaga was born in 1853, in New York City, the second of four children of diplomat Antonio Modesto Yznaga del Valle (1823-1892) and Ellen Maria Clement (1833-1908). Her parents acquired properties in New York and in Newport, while retaining plantations and sugar mills in Trinidad, Cuba and Louisiana. In the fall of 1875, she met the future 8th Duke of Manchester, George Montagu, Viscount Mandeville (1853–1892) at her father’s country home in Morristown, New Jersey. On 22 May 1876 in Grace Church, New York, Consuelo married Lord Mandeville. After their marriage, they settled on the Duke of Manchester’s estate in County Armagh in Ireland. They had a son and twin daughters. She was a relation of the Vanderbilts by marriage.

The New York Journal, Sunday, December 11, 1898, says that Muller-Ury “…was to have painted the portrait of the Duchess of Manchester, but she was too ill to give him the necessary sittings.” However, at this time she would have been the Dowager Duchess. In a letter to James J. Hill from his London Studio in Pembroke Gardens, Kensington, dated October 14, 1898 (Hill Papers: James J. Hill Reference Library, St. Paul) the artist wrote ‘…I started the portrait of the Duchesse [sic] of Manchester – but on account of the bad healt(h) of her delicate daughter she left London last week to pass the winter in St. Moritz…’ It is not known whether he completed the picture.