WOERISHOFFER, Carola (1898)

The sitter was the younger daughter of banker Charles Woerishoffer and Anna Uhl, and sister of Countess Antoinette Seilern. She was born in August 1885, educated at the Brearley School, New York, and at Bryn Mawr College, PA (Graduate Class of 1907) and dedicated her short adult life to social improvement. She died in a car crash on September 11, 1911, leaving a bequest of $750,000 to Bryn Mawr College which, in 1915, founded the Carola Woerishoffer Graduate Department of Social Economy, the first graduate school in the field in the United States to offer a Ph.D.

Bibliography:

Bryn Mawr College Class of 1907, Carola Woerishoffer: Her Life & Work, Bryn Mawr, PA, 1912.

Robin Kadison Berson, Marching to a Different Drummer: Unrecognized Heroes of American History, Westport, Connecticut & London, 1994.

Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, The Power & Passion of M. Carey Thomas, University of Illinois Press, 1999, p.380.

Ida Tarbell, ‘A Noble Life: The Story of Carola Woerishoffer,’ American Magazine 74 (November 1911), pp.281-287

—

The sitter would have been thirteen years old. Mrs. Anna Woerishoffer wrote to Muller-Ury from 145, West 58th Street, New York on March 14, 1898 (artist’s papers) as follows:

‘My dear Mr. Muller-Ury,

I wanted to write you ere this and thank you again, for the trouble you took with Carola’s picture. My father finds it excellent, which is a great gratification to me. If you have not ordered the frame, please do not bother about it, as I will get one in London. Would you kindly let me know my indebtedness to you? I shall thank you too, if you have both pictures properly packed. Could it not be done here and all the cases put together, as they could all be sent out together in the fall?

           Yours very sincerely, Anna Woerishoffer.’

Presumably the second picture mentioned here is that of her older daughter Countess Antoinette Seilern which was also painted in 1898.