Early Life
With such wealth and cultural advantages, Elena enjoyed a privileged childhood. She and her siblings were educated by private tutors, and she spoke and wrote fluent German, French, English, and some Russian. She attended art school in Munich where she studied with Hans Hoffman at the age of seventeen and in Paris, at the atelier of André Lhote with fellow students Henri Cartier-Bresson, Simon Elwes, Guy Arnoux, and Conrad O'Brien-Ffrench.
In her memoirs, Tatiana von Metternich recalls Elena and her mother Olga visiting her aunts in the Paris émigré community, bringing luxurious gifts to leaven their reduced circumstances. (Later, when Tatiana married Prince Paul Metternich, the owner of Schloss Johannisberg, she lived up the hill from the Mumm family's estate, on the famed wine-growing terroir of Johannisberg, a small mountain girdled by vineyards which overlooks the Rhine, near Frankfurt am Main.)
Elena's sister, Olga, was for over 26 years the companion and partner of the Whitney heiress and horse racing queen, Dorothy Paget.
Read more about this topic: Elena Mumm Thornton Wilson
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