Identity:

Mme Vitti was the proprietess of the Académie Vitti in Montparnasse, Paris. The Viiti family were prominent in Treviso, but it is not known if she was related to them. Another possibility is that she was related to the Vitti brothers who were responsible for the statue of Columbus of 1876 in Marconi Square, Philadelphia, PA.

Life:

The Académie Vitti was popular with art students from many countries. Carmen Rossi, the proprietess of the Académie Carmen, which was supported by Whistler (1898-1901), was jealous of the success of Mme Vitti.

Teachers at the Académie Vitti in the early 1900s included the painters Luc Olivier Merson (1846-1920) and Jacques-Emile Blanche (1861-1942) in 1903, and Paul Gervais (1859-1934) in 1904; as well as the American sculptor Frederick MacMonnies (who worked with WHistler at the Académie Carmen when it was first established). Later, in 1912, Kees van Dongen (1877-1968) taught there. The Spanish artist Maria Blanchard (1871-1959) was an assistant at the Académie Vitti.

Students included numerous Americans: the painter Colin Cambell Cooper (1856-1937); Miss Hayden, School of Fine Arts, University of Nebraska; the Cincinnati born painter Louise Eleanor Zaring (1872-1970); the sculptress Miss Yandell; Claire Shuttleworth of Buffalo, NY; sculptress Janet Scudder (1873-1940); and Ernest Warburton Shurtleff (1862-1917), congregational minister, who organised Students' atelier reunions between 1906-1912.

Other pupils included the Russian painters, Aleksander Yakovlevich-Golovin (1863-1930) and David Petrovich Shterenberg (1881-1948); the Canadian Mary Riter Hamilton (1873-1954); the English painter Charles Ginner (1878-1952); the Polish artists Konstanty Brandel (1880-1970) and Tadeusz Cielewski; and the Finnish painter Pekka Halonen (1865-1933).

Bibliography:

The Grove Dictionary of Art Online, ed. L. Macy, http://www.groveart.com (accessed 2004); http://www.artnet.com (accessed 2004); http://search.ancestry.com (accessed 2004.10).