Belle Silveira

Biography Born in Erie, Pennsylvania on September 21, 1877, Belle Silveira studied with John Vanderpoel at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She was also an art student of William Merritt Chase and Frederick Richardson, and was best known for her pencil sketches.

On September 8, 1906, Silveira wed Otto Wenceslas Gorski, a stepson of the renowned Polish pianist, Ignacy Jan Paderewski, and son of Helena Paderewska. The couple reportedly lived in poverty frequently during their first years of marriage.

Silveira, who reportedly was subjected to repeated incidents of domestic violence during her marriage to Gorski, ultimately divorced him. She later remarried an older man, taking his surname of Bradford, but that marriage also ended in divorce.

Sometime during the early 1920s, she relocated to the New York home of her friend, Ralph Modjeski, a former classmate of Paderewski who had become one of the most respected bridge builders in the United States after emigrating from Poland. Modjeski had been the person who had introduced Silveira to Gorski during the early 1900s. According to newspapers in Illinois, Modjeski and Silveira had had a longstanding friendship.

While living at Modjeski's home, Silveira completed a series of drawings of his bridge designs. Silveira's pencil sketches and sculptures were exhibited during her lifetime as follows:

"Seven years ago she told me that when her illness—a sort of sleeping sickness caused by tubercular lesions in her back, originally caused by her husband's beatings—became intolerable, she would end her life. She had no religion, and no fear."

Additional news reports stated that Silveira had left a suicide note indicating that she had grown increasingly despondent about her health, and feared that she would be paralyzed due to her medical condition.

Legacy

Silveira's work is included in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the National Gallery of Art, Washington.