Eugenia Errázuriz

Eugenia Huici Arguedas de Errázuriz (15 September 1860 – 1951) was a Chilean patron of modernism and a style leader of Paris from 1880 into the 20th century, who paved the way for the modernist minimalist aesthetic that would be taken up in fashion by Coco Chanel. Her circle of friends and protégés included Pablo Picasso, Igor Stravinsky, Jean Cocteau, and the poet Blaise Cendrars. She was of Basque descent.

Eugenia Huici was born in Chile of Bolivian parents, one of thirteen children born to Ildefonso Huici y Peón, a silver magnate who had fled civil war and moved his family to their estates in La Calera, then a village in the banks of the Aconcagua river, some sixty kilometers (about forty miles) northeast of Valparaíso. Her mother was Manuela Arguedas. Among her siblings were two sisters, Rosa and Ana, and a brother, José. She was also an aunt of Patricia Lopez-Willshaw (1912–2010) née Lopez-Huci, who was married to Arturo Lopez-Willshaw (1900–1962).

Eugenia was famous from an early age for her beauty; French nuns supervised the girl's education. The young woman added to her silver-mine inheritance by marrying José Tomás Errázuriz; a young and wealthy landscape painter from a well-known winemaking family. Her first years of marriage were spent at Panquehue Errázuriz, the family's wine estate, where she had a son who died soon after birth; the couple eventually had three surviving children: Maximiliano, Carmen, and María. She soon convinced her husband to move to Paris in 1882, where his brother-in-law Ramón Subercaseaux Vicuña was the Chilean consul and was married to Amalia Errázuriz, a beauty who had been painted by John Singer Sargent.

The couple settled in Paris, where Eugenia attracted a high-profile following. In the autumn of that year, they met John Singer Sargent while they were visiting Venice, possibly on their honeymoon, and seeing José's brother who had taken a studio with Sargent at the Palazzo Rezzonico. Described as an extraordinary beauty, with a beaked nose and raven hair, she was painted by Sargent (who had previously painted Madame Subercaseaux in 1880). Sargent became very fond of Madame Errázuriz and would paint her several times. Besides Sargent, she was also painted by Jacques-Emile Blanche (French painter 1861–1942), Giovanni Boldini, Paul Helleu, Augustus John, Ambrose McEvoy, and Pablo Picasso.

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