Florence Sutro (May 1, 1865 – April 27, 1906), often known as Mrs. Theodore Sutro, was an English-born musician and painter, most known for creating the National Federation of Women’s Music Clubs and being its first president. Her father was Harry W. Clinton (1837—1893), son of Captain Harry and Mary Elizabeth (Villiers) Clinton. Mrs. Sutro’s husband (1845-1927), whom she married on October 1, 1884, was a lawyer, financier and Democrat who collected paintings by the Moran family of marine artists on which in 1905 he published a book ‘Thirteen Historical Marine Paintings by Edward Moran representing Thirteen Chapters of American History‘. She and her husband were advocates of Women’s Suffrage. In 1905 she and her husband published privately in New York a book of poems and letters called ‘Milestones on Life’s Pathway‘. She died of pleurisy and of “complication of diseases” at her home on 320 West 102nd Street.
The portrait was ‘just finished’ according to the New York Recorder, April 15, 1895 when it was displayed at a musical reception given by Mrs. Theodore Sutro at 20, Fifth Avenue, New York, amongst the guests at which was the pianist-composer Xaver Scharwenka and his wife. It was exhibited at the National Academy of Design, March/April 1896, No. 328, as ‘Portrait of Mrs. Theodore Sutro’ and listed as lent by the sitter. A review of the exhibition in The New York Evening Telegram, March 31, 1896, stated that ‘There are also a number of portraits of women, among the best of which is one of Mrs. Theodore Sutro, by A. Muller-Ury.’
Mrs. Sutro had also been painted by Rhoda Holmes Nichols in 1895 which portrait was exhibited at the National Academy of Design’s Loan Exhibition of Portraits for the Benefit of St. John’s Guild and the Orthopaedic Hospital, October 30-7 December 1895 as No: 233.
The portrait possibly appears to the right in an 1896 Byron photograph in the Museum of the City of New York (93.1.1.17547) of the library in the Sutro house at 320 West 102nd Street.
