A Career Fit for a Duchess: Rosita Marlborough Takes on New York Art Scene
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TO TWO MANORS BORN
Few could imagine spending summers at the family manse, a 17th-century manor in Sweden with several hundred rooms, and moving for the season to Blenheim Palace, which boasts more than 300 rooms. But for Rosita Marlborough, the Duchess of Marlborough, it’s reality. She has even found time to develop a career as a painter in addition to managing her households.
She is the daughter of a Swedish diplomat, Count Carl Ludwig Douglas, and starting whiling away her days in one of the world’s most famous palaces following her 1972 marriage to the 11th Duke of Marlborough.
Blenheim was built as a gift from Queen Anne to the first Duke of Marlborough, John Churchill. It was a reward for his 1704 victory over the French – work began promptly in 1705.The promised sum failed to arrive due to a plot to topple the duke from the queen’s favor. When she died, he owed money to the architect and workmen, who were ultimately paid out of his own pocket. Winston Churchill was born in the palace in 1874 and his gravesite rests in the nearby town.
Now the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough call Blenheim home, and their two children, Lord Edward, 30, and Lady Alexandra Spencer-Churchill, 27, were born there. The duchess studied art as a young woman in Stockholm and decorative arts in Paris.
While raising her children, she painted when she had time. In 1992, the duchess returned to art as a professional. She has had two solo exhibitions in London and one in Palm Beach. The other night she opened her first New York show at Lars Bolander gallery.
“I love seeing the harmony of beautiful things around me,” she told the Knickerbocker. Her first show featured figurative paintings. Since then, she traveled to Morocco where the color and light fascinated her and influenced her shift to abstract imagery. “I like this change into abstract art. For me, it is the use of positive and negative space and produces total serenity.” On the gallery’s walls were both figurative and abstract paintings, many of which were sold that evening. But what walked out the door immediately were her watercolors of Moroccan soldiers.
Ms. Spencer-Churchill and her brother came out to support their mother along with many friends including Kenneth Jay Lane, Pauline Pitt, photographer Ellen Graham, whose new book of photographs is on display at Bergdorf Goodman, Joanne and Roberto de Guardiola, Virginia Burke, Mrs. George Abbott, Polly and John Espy, Howard Levin, Pat Patterson, and fellow artist Liz Thompson.
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PRESS PALS
A distinguished group from the London Press Club and the Press House of Liege and Luxembourg are in town. Martyn Bond, David Selves, Mark Bryant, Laurence Briquet, and Tania Mozer are among those visiting the Big Apple this week.
On Tuesday, they attended a cocktail reception at the Overseas Press Club to thank the outgoing president of the OPC, Alexis Gelber, who is the director of special projects at Newsweek. The event also welcomed the members of the European press, who represent reciprocal clubs.
In attendance were the OPC’s new president and a senior editorial adviser of Time Inc., Richard B. Stolley, as well as four other past OPC presidents: a former managing editor of Parade Publications, Larry Smith; a former WPIX news director, John Corporon; Larry Martz, who co-chairs the OPC Freedom of the Press Committee, and Roy Rowan, whose most recent book is “Chasing the Dragon: A Veteran Journalist’s Firsthand Account of the 1949 Chinese Revolution” (Lyons Press).
Some continued with a nightcap at the Algonquin Hotel afterwards.
On Wednesday, Messrs. Bond, Selves, Bryant, and Briquet, and Ms. Mozer visited the United Nations. Its director of news and press in the department of public information, Ahmad Fawzi, held a briefing in the U.N. pressroom. An official luncheon followed in the Delegates Dining Room sponsored by the European Commission to the United Nations. The speaker at lunch was Angel Carro Castrillo, deputy head of the delegation of the European Commission to the U.N. A member of both the OPC and the London Press Club, Ian Williams, who is also in the United Nations Correspondents Association, then led a tour.
On Thursday, the focus shifted from the political to the financial. First, the group stopped in at the Financial Times office, where they were addressed by the paper’s editor, Lionel Barber. After tucking into lunch at the Yale Club, they toured Bloomberg, with the OPC’s treasurer, Allan Dodds Frank. Last night, they explored New York Harbor aboard a yacht. Today, they plan to wind up their whirlwind visit with lunch at the Rainbow Room.
The London Press Club has played host to many important visitors itself. A few years ago, Prime Minister Blair made news at a London Press Club luncheon. He said that he wanted to make an important announcement, and continued that the matter was something that he had “been struggling with a very long time.”
He went on to say he needed to wear eyeglasses while making public speeches. Slipping on his spectacles, Mr. Blair told the audience that he now sees journalists “in an entirely different light as well.”