Marie Norton

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Marie Norton Whitney Harriman (1903-1970) was the first wife (1923-1929) of Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney, with whom she had two children, Harry Payne Whitney II and Nancy Marie Whitney. Her second marriage was to statesman W. Averell Harriman. From 1930 to 1942 she owned and operated an art gallery on 57th Street in Manhattan, the Marie Harriman Gallery. Many of the works she bought and collected, including those of the artist Walt Kuhn, were later donated to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. Marie was a close friend of Marjorie Duchin, wife to bandleader Eddy Duchin, and when Marjorie died from complications in childbirth, Marie became surrogate mother to their son, Peter Duchin.

Photograph of President Harry Truman standing next to Marie Norton and W. Averell Harriman: http://www.trumanlibrary.org/photographs/view.php?id=14600&rr=