Lady Feodora Gleichen

Who was Lady Feodora Gleichen?

Lady Feodora Georgina Maud Gleichen was a British sculptor of figures and portrait busts and designer of decorative objects.

Born Countess Feodora Georgina Maud von Gleichen, she was the eldest daughter of Prince Victor of Hohenlohe-Langenburg and his wife, Laura. In 1889, she and her two sisters, Valda and Helena, were bridesmaids to Princess Louise and the Earl of Fife. Lord Edward Gleichen, the distinguished soldier, was her brother.

Gleichen studied art in her father's studio at St James's and later with Alphonse Legros at the Slade School of Art. While maintaining her father's studio she associated with leading artists such as Sir George Frampton, sculptor of the statue of Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens. She completed her studies in Rome in 1891 and regularly exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1892 and at the New Dudley Gallery. A bas-relief and hand-mirror in jade and bronze won her a bronze medal at the Exposition Universelle in 1900.

In 1917, Gleichen was granted the rank and style of a daughter of a marquess by Royal Warrant of Precedence following the reforms of the family names of George V. She died, unmarried, in 1922 at her grace and favour apartment in St James's Palace. Shortly before her death, she was awarded the Légion d'honneur in 1922 and was later posthumously made the first woman member of the Royal British Society of Sculptors.