Paula Gellibrand

Paula Gellibrand, Marquise de Casa Maury (1898–1986) was once one of the favourite models of Cecil Beaton, described by her contemporaries as "the most beautiful woman in Europe". Her sister was Nadeja Gellibrand, also known as Nada Ruffer, Vogue editor.[1]

Paula Gellibrand

Biography

Paula Gellibrand was born in Penarth in 1898, the daughter of William Clarke Gellibrand, a timber importer based in Cardiff.[1][2]

Paula Gellibrand came out as a "striking" debutante in 1919.[3] That year Augustus John painted the portrait Portrait of Baronne Baba d'Erlanger and Miss Paula Gellibrand.[4] She made a London social splash around 1920, as a protégée of the Baroness d'Erlanger.[5] The Baroness's daughter Mary Liliane Matilda, called Baba (1901–1945), was her fashion stylist and childhood friend.[6] When Coco Chanel opened a London boutique in 1927, dressing Baba, Paula and Daisy Fellowes, the three could be considered "London's leading beauties".[7]

Associations

After both were married, Paula struck up a long-lasting friendship with Edwina Mountbatten.[3] She and her husband in 1926 visited the Mountbattens at Adsdean House, which they had leased, near Chichester.[8][9] In wartime and by then Paula Long, she visited the Mountbattens at Broadlands in 1942.[10] Another good friend was Alice de Janzé, first met in Paris in 1921.[1] Paula became a lifelong friend of Cecil Beaton, who in The Glass of Fashion (1954) documented her appearance. The 1928 portrait of Paula Gellibrand, Marquise de Casa Maury by Beaton sold at Christie's for £1,375 in 2017.[11]

Paula visited the Mountbattens in India in 1948, in a house party including Malcolm Sargent and his wife. She kept in touch with Edwina, and visited them again at Classiebawn Castle in Ireland in 1955.[12]

As model

Gellibrand was the first London debutante to work as a mannequin. She was followed by others such as Nancy Beaton.[13][14] She was known as "The Gellibrand".[15]

She began in the shop owned by the Baroness d'Erlanger.[15] In 1922 she was working as a mannequin at the dressmaker Madame Victoire, in Brompton Road, with the Baroness;[16][17] the Baroness and her daughter painted dress designs.[18] The Victoire business at 229 Brompton Road in 1921 provided stage costumes for Viola Tree's production of The Tempest at the Aldwych Theatre.[19] In a space above it, the Baroness held with assistance from Marcel Boulestin an exhibition of works by Jean Émile Laboureur.[20]

A noted 1928 photographic session for Condé Nast by Cecil Beaton of Gellibrand posed her in a sequin dress in front of a sequin curtain at her modernist home.[21][22] In 1933, Beaton described Gellibrand as "a good-looking tomboy, with gold hair and mushroom-coloured skin around the eyes". She was

"[...] seen at every ball and appeared in Society pageants in the form of a Grecian goddess, and as the months passed, her beauty became more exotically attenuated [...] when I see her in fancy-dress costume, I cannot believe that I have not designed her myself, she is so exactly like my idea of what a beauty of to-day should be."[23]

He was particularly struck by her "Modigliani features and exquisitely slender hands."[1] Sheila Chisholm wrote:

Paula's blonde beauty was quite unique. She had large strange-coloured eyes, and her hair was the colour of light and dark honey. She was tall and dressed to perfection.[24]

Works

In 1936, together with her husband William Allen, Paula wrote Strange Coast, a novel of romance and adventure set in "the Meskhian Republic" — a fictionalized Georgia of the 1920s, published under the pseudonym "Liam Pawle".

Family

Paula Gellibrand married four times:

  • Ivan Wilkie Brooks
  • in 1923, Pedro Mones, Marquis de Casa Maury, a racing driver and founder of the Curzon Cinema.[6] Beaton remembers that when she married she was "dressed as a nun with scarlet finger nails".[23]
  • from 1932 to 1939, William Edward David Allen.[1]
  • "Boy" Long, a rancher at Elementaita in Kenya.[4]

Before marrying the Marquis de Casa Maury, she had an affair with Freddie Guest.[25] It was Freddie who commissioned the Augustus John double portrait.[4]

In 1942, her sister Nada Ruffer divorced from Iva Patcevitch, the Head of Condé Nast.[26] Beaton said that she was "a very pleasing exaggeration of her [Gellibrand] painted by any Parisian fashion-artist. She is taller, thinner, her nose is more pointed and her eyelashes are longer, her hands more claw-like, her hair more sleek; she is even more exaggeratedly chic."[23]

In literature

The 1924 novel Serena Blandish by Enid Bagnold was based on Paula Gellibrand's early life.[6][1] It also had a character based on Baroness Catherine d'Erlanger, who introduced Paula to society.[27] It was put on the stage by S. N. Behrman in 1929 at the Morosco Theatre, with Ruth Gordon playing the title role.[28]

References
  1. Spicer, Paul (2010). The Temptress: The scandalous life of Alice, Countess de Janzé. Simon and Schuster. p. 34. Retrieved 18 January 2018.
  2. "Mrs. Dudley Ward to Marry: The Marquis of Casa Maury". Western Mail. 14 October 1937. p. 15.
  3. Morgan, Janet P. (1991). Edwina Mountbatten: A Life of Her Own. Scribner. p. 168. ISBN 978-0-684-19346-5.
  4. "Portrait of Baronne Baba d'Erlanger (1901-1945) and Miss Paula Gellibrand (1898-1964)". Richard Green Fine Paintings. Archived from the original on 19 January 2018. Retrieved 18 January 2018.
  5. "Famous Beauty Engaged". Sunday Post. 11 February 1923. p. 11.
  6. "Paula Gellibrand". Grazia. Retrieved 18 January 2018.
  7. Madsen, Axel (17 March 2015). Chanel: A Woman of Her Own. Open Road Media. p. 250. ISBN 978-1-5040-0853-2.
  8. Morgan, Janet P. (1991). Edwina Mountbatten: A Life of Her Own. Scribner. p. 188. ISBN 978-0-684-19346-5.
  9. Parks and Gardens. "Adsdean Park - Funtington". Parks & Gardens.
  10. Morgan, Janet P. (1991). Edwina Mountbatten: A Life of Her Own. Scribner. p. 314. ISBN 978-0-684-19346-5.
  11. "Sir Cecil Beaton (British, 1904-1980)". Christie's. Retrieved 18 January 2018.
  12. Morgan, Janet P. (1991). Edwina Mountbatten: A Life of Her Own. Scribner. pp. 421, 432, 459. ISBN 978-0-684-19346-5.
  13. Glynn, Prudence (1978). In Fashion: Dress in the Twentieth Century. Oxford University Press. p. 91. ISBN 978-0-19-520072-0.
  14. Horn, Pamela (15 October 2013). Country House Society: The Private Lives of England's Upper Class After the First World War. Amberley Publishing Limited. p. 245. ISBN 978-1-4456-3538-5.
  15. Cartland, Barbara (1943). The Isthmus Years. Hutchinson. p. 60.
  16. "Beauty's New Role: Miss Paula Gellibrand as Leading Mannequin". Daily News (London). 31 July 1922. p. 5.
  17. "£250 to Be a Mannequin: Mystery Advertisement Puzzles West End". Leeds Mercury. 28 November 1922. p. 11.
  18. "Dress Designs". Globe. 31 March 1920. p. 14.
  19. ""The Tempest" at The Aldwych". Common Cause. 18 February 1921. p. 12.
  20. Boulestin, Xavier Marcel (1936). Myself, My Two Countries ... Cassell, Limited. p. 279.
  21. "Paula Gellibrand, Marquise de Casa Maury - National Portrait Gallery". www.npg.org.uk.
  22. Pepper, Terence; Beaton, Cecil; Conrad, Peter; Beaton, Sir Cecil Walter Hardy; Britain), National Portrait Gallery (Great; Allemagne), Kunstmuseum (Wolfsburg (1 January 2004). Beaton Portraits. Yale University Press. p. 12. ISBN 978-0-300-10289-5.
  23. Beaton, Cecil (1933). The Book Of Beauty. Retrieved 18 January 2018.
  24. Wainwright, Robert (1 January 2017). Sheila: The Australian ingenue who bewitched British society. Atlantic Books. p. 96. ISBN 978-1-925575-39-2.
  25. Lovell, Mary S. (2012). The Churchills: In Love and War. W. W. Norton & Company. p. 337. Retrieved 18 January 2018.
  26. "Iva Patcevitch, 92, Retired Chairman Of Magazine Firm". The New York Times. 1993. Retrieved 18 January 2018.
  27. Rintoul, M. C. (5 March 2014). Dictionary of Real People and Places in Fiction. Routledge. p. 397. ISBN 978-1-136-11932-3.
  28. Bordman, Gerald (1995). American Theatre: A Chronicle of Comedy and Drama 1914-1930. OUP USA. p. 376. ISBN 978-0-19-509078-9.
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