Charlotte de Rothschild

French painter

Baroness Charlotte de Rothschild (6 May 1825 – 20 July 1899) was a French socialite, painter, and a member of the prominent Rothschild banking family of France.

She was born in Paris, the daughter of Betty von Rothschild (1805–1886) and James Mayer de Rothschild (1792–1868). Charlotte de Rothschild was raised by very wealthy parents who were at the center of Parisian culture. They patronized a number of major figures in the arts community including Gioacchino Rossini, Frédéric Chopin, Honoré de Balzac, Eugène Delacroix, and Heinrich Heine. Chopin had become Charlotte's piano teacher in 1841, and as a tacit acknowledgment of the many years of support extended by Baron James and his wife Betty, dedicated to her an autograph of his so called Farewell Waltz in A flat major, Op. 69 No.1, (almost certainly as an 1843 wedding present) his celebrated Ballade No. 4 in F minor, Op. 52, and four years later another work, his Waltz in C sharp minor, Op. 64, No. 2.

Like her father, Charlotte de Rothschild was a collector of art and grew up around her artistic friends. As an adult, Charlotte would count amongst her friends the likes of Jean Baptiste Camille Corot, Henri Rousseau, and Édouard Manet. Her art purchases included works by Henri Fantin Latour, Louis Léopold Boilly, Anthony van Dyck plus a number by Rococo painters Jean Baptiste Siméon Chardin, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo and François Boucher. However, Charlotte de Rothschild's interest in art went beyond collecting. Talented in her own right, she studied with Nélie Jacquemart (1841–1912) and would earn respect for her landscape paintings, watercolors and engravings, enough so that she is recognized in the Benezit Dictionary of Artists. She exhibited in 1872 at the Paris Salon as well as at an 1879 exhibition in London, and from 1879 showed work at the annual salon of the Société des aquarellistes français. Although a minor artist, her work has been on display at the Musée du Luxembourg in Paris and other museums around France. Her illuminated Haggadah of Pesach is in the Braginsky Collection. Charlotte de Rothschild's interest extended to music, entertaining musician friends such as Georges Bizet and Camille Saint Saëns. Charlotte de Rothschild's lifetime of involvement in art and music would greatly influence her offspring, producing writers, actors and playwrights.

Tragedy struck her family in 1881 when she lost her eldest surviving child, thirty seven year old James Edouard. An attorney in the Rothschild bank in Paris, James Edouard de Rothschild had served in the Garde Mobile during the Franco Prussian War and suffered from a number of illnesses, including depression that led to his suicide.