Sybil Harris

Sybil Harris was an American socialite, art patron, and collector of Cubist art, who was active in Paris in the 1920s. Married to William Harris, a theater agent living between New York and Paris, she was friendly with artists and close to the Ballets Russes circle, especially Erik Satie, whom she probably met through the writer and art adviser Henri-Pierre Roché. Harris had an affair with Roché, who regularly wrote in his diaries about her and the dinners she hosted. Harris’s dinners, typically held at her home, included such guests as composers Georges Auric and Satie, artists Constantin Brancusi and Moïse Kisling, and writer Gertrude Stein.

In terms of her collecting practices, Harris was especially interested in the work of Juan Gris. She bought two Gris drawings at the second Kahnweiler sequestration sale on November 17–18, 1921, as well as one painting by Pablo Picasso, Glass and Apple (1911; Albertina Museum, Vienna) and one charcoal drawing by Fernand Léger. A client of the Galerie Simon in Paris (formerly the Galerie Kahnweiler), she acquired Gris’s Pierrot with Guitar (1922; Von der Heydt Museum, Wuppertal) before selling it back to the gallery several years later. In an auction held at the Hôtel Drouot on July 3, 1924, Harris sold several works by Gris as well as works by Maurice de Vlaminck and Jean Metzinger. Little else is known about her activities as a collector.

Harris also had important links to the literary world. She collaborated with the magazine Vanity Fair, for which she commissioned Satie to write articles on Stravinsky’s opera Mavra in June 1922 and on Debussy the following year. Roché, who was selling play scripts to William Harris to be adapted in New York, noted in his diaries that Sybil was also an accomplished translator of French plays. After returning to the United States, Harris pursued acting, enjoying a film career in the 1930s and 1940s.