Count Louis Raphaël Cahen d'Anvers (24 May 1837 – 20 December 1922) was a French banker.

Louis Cahen d'Anvers
Born
Louis Raphaël Cahen d'Anvers

(1837-05-24)24 May 1837
Died20 December 1922(1922-12-20) (aged 85)
NationalityFrench
Occupation(s)Banker, politician

Life and family

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Born in 1837 as the son of Meyer Joseph Cahen d'Anvers and Clara Bischoffsheim (1810–1876), he was a scion of two wealthy Jewish banking families.[1] He married Louise de Morpurgo, who was from a wealthy Sephardi Jewish family from Trieste.

 
Pink and Blue (Alice on the left)

Two of their daughters, Alice (1876–1965) and Elisabeth (1874–1944 KZ Auschwitz), were painted by Pierre-Auguste Renoir in Pink and Blue in 1881. Alice married Major General Sir Charles Townshend and was the grandmother of Belgian-American journalist Arnaud de Borchgrave.[2][3]

 
Little Irène

A third daughter, Irène (1872–1963), was the subject of a Renoir painting entitled Little Irène in 1880. Louis was so dissatisfied with the painting that he hung it in the servants' quarters and delayed payment of only 1500 francs.[4] Irène married Moïse de Camondo in 1891 and divorced in 1902. During the Nazi occupation of France, Irène survived by escaping to a villa in the south of France. Her daughter, Béatrice, was murdered in the Auschwitz concentration camp.[5]

References

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  1. ^ The Cahen d'Anvers family claimed descent from the Davidic Line see jewish refugees
  2. ^ "Obituary: Sir C. Townsend". The Times. 19 May 1924. p. 9.
  3. ^ "Arnaud de Borchgrave Awarded the Legion of Honor". Embassy of France in Washington, D.C. 21 July 2014. Retrieved 21 June 2017.
  4. ^ Nord, Philip G. (2000). Impressionists and Politics: Art and Democracy in the Nineteenth Century. London: Routledge. p. 60. ISBN 041507715X.
  5. ^ A Secret Paris Museum and an Aristocratic Family Decimated by the Holocaust