Sarah Helena de Kay Gilder | |
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 Richard Watson Gilder, Helena de Kay Gilder, and Rodman de Kay Gilder | |
| Born | 1846 New York City, NY |
| Died | 28 May 1916 New York City, NY |
| Education | Cooper Union |
| Occupation | Painter |
| Spouse | Richard Watson Gilder |
| Children | Seven, including Rodman de Kay Gilder Rosamond Gilder |
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Sarah Helena de Kay Gilder (1846 - 28 May 1916) was an American painter, illustrator, and cultural tastemaker from New York City.
Sarah Helena de Kay Gilder (also known as Helena de Kay Gilder after her marriage) was born in New York City in 1846. She was the daughter of George Coleman de Kay and Janet Halleck de Kay (nee Drake), and granddaughter of the poet Joseph Rodman Drake. [1] Her father was a naval officer who died when she was only two years old. After her father's death, her mother moved her and her brother, George, to Dresden Germany where they lived until 1861, before moving back to the United States so her mother could be closer to her older sister Katherine after she became a mother. She was then enrolled in a girl's boarding school located in Farmington, Connecticut.
She studied art at the Cooper Union Institute as well as at the National Academy of Design in the 1870s, during the first years that life classes were open to women. [2] She also as studied privately with artists Winslow Homer, John La Farge [2] and Albert Pinkham Ryder. [3]
In May 1872, Helena met her husband, Richard Watson Gilder, in the offices of Scribner's Monthly , where Richard was then working as a managing editor. In February 1874, Helena and Richard announced their engagement, and by June of that year they were married. [4] Winslow Homer gave de Kay a portrait he painted of her as a wedding gift, inscribed with her wedding date in the lower right hand corner. [4] In 1884, the artist John La Farge created a stained glass panel to commemorate the Gilder's tenth wedding anniversary. [5] It was later refashioned as a firescreen during a remodel of their house by friend and architect Stanford White. [5]
Richard is best known for his work as the editor of The Century Magazine and as a poet. Some of his works include The New Day (1875), Five Books of Song (1894), In the Heights (1905), and several more. Helena and Richard amassed a large number of letters in correspondence with each other over their marriage, [6] [7] and Helena was the subject of several love poems written by her husband.
The Gilders had seven children. Her son, Rodman de Kay Gilder, [8] and her youngest daughter, Rosamond Gilder, were authors. Her daughter Dorothea de Kay Gilder was a subject of painter Cecilia Beaux [9] [10] and had a short career as a stage actress. [3]
Gilder aspired to be an oil painter, and often did the accompanying illustrations for her husband's books of poetry, like Two Worlds: and Other Poems. [11] Helena de Kay Gilder's best known work was cited as "her figure pictures, 'The Young Mother' and 'The Last Arrow' " by The Art Amateur. [12] Her impact on the art world spread beyond her own art production. Gilder contributed to the art world by helping to organize the Arts Student League in 1875, and co-found [1] the Society of American Artists in 1887 which provided primary younger classically artists with the opportunity to be a part of an alternative association. [13] Her motivation for starting the organization occurred after she showed one painting at The National Academy of Design's annual show, while she was there as a student. Her painting received a poor location within the show and she felt her paintings location reflected the academy's reluctance to accept new types of art. [14] The goal of the Society of American Artists was to move in a different direction than the National Academy and other conventional artists groups, while showing that art is valid in many different forms and styles, and can be left up to the artist. [15] Along with Gilder, writers including Clarence Cook, Charles de Kay, Richard C. Brown, and her husband Richard Watson Gilder criticized the conservative mindset of the National Academy of Design. [16]
Helena and her family were the subjects of numerous portraits by several of close friends and artists, including Augustus Saint-Gaudens, [17] Cecilia Beaux, [18] [9] [19] [20] and Winslow Homer. [4]
Helena de Kay Gilder is often known as a muse and romantic interest of Winslow Homer. [21] It is thought that Gilder and Winslow may have met through her brother Charles, who had been connected to Winslow since 1867. He had stayed in studio in the University Building in New York City while Winslow was in France at the time. [21] Gilder and Winslow spent a considerable amount of time together, and it is the correspondence through letters that have given indication that Winslow made multiple attempts to romantically pursue her. Though Homer is known to have painted several women in upscale resorts across the Northeast, Gilder is known to be one of the few that is nameable. [22] Gilder is known to be the female subject in many of his works like The Butterfly (1872), as well as speculated to be the subject of other unconfirmed works by Homer. [23]
One of Gilder's best known friendships was will illustrator Mary Hallock Foote. Though from very different social circles, and socioeconomic backgrounds, the two became close friends while they were students, and shared a lengthy correspondence throughout their lives. [13] Gilder and Foote had large impacts on each other's careers as they both provided each other with critiques and feedback on their work, and Gilder's husband offered Foote several artistic commissions for his magazine. [13] It was also through the Gilders that Foote was introduced to several other female artists and publishers at the time.[ citation needed ]
Gilder believed that women were "men’s equal, and almost as well educated, as good and as intelligent in ordinary matters,” but opposed granting them the right to vote. [24]
Helena de Kay Gilder died on 28 May 1916 [25] [26] after an operation for appendicitis. [1]
Eliza Cecilia Beaux was an American artist and the first woman to teach art at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Known for her elegant and sensitive portraits of friends, relatives, and Gilded Age patrons, Beaux painted many famous subjects including First Lady Edith Roosevelt, Admiral Sir David Beatty and Georges Clemenceau.
François Boucher was a French painter, draughtsman and etcher, who worked in the Rococo style. Boucher is known for his idyllic and voluptuous paintings on classical themes, decorative allegories, and pastoral scenes. He was perhaps the most celebrated painter and decorative artist of the 18th century.
Events from the year 1942 in art.
Richard Watson Gilder was an American poet and editor.
Mary Hallock Foote (1847–1938) was an American author and illustrator. She is best known for her illustrated short stories and novels portraying life in the mining communities of the turn-of-the-century American West.
Mary Foote (1872–1968) was an American painter and producer of notes of Carl Jung's seminars. As an artist, she lived and worked in New York's Washington Square, Paris and Peking. From 1928 to the 1950s she lived in Zurich and created and published notes of Carl Jung's seminars until World War II. She returned to the United States in the 1950s and spent her later years in Connecticut, where she died.
Dorothea Margaret Tanning was an American painter, printmaker, sculptor, writer, and poet. Her early work was influenced by Surrealism.
Jeannette Leonard Gilder was an American author, journalist, critic, and editor. She served as the regular correspondent and literary critic for Chicago Tribune, and was also a correspondent for the Boston Saturday Evening Gazette, Boston Transcript, Philadelphia Record and Press, and various other papers. She was the author of Taken by Siege; Autobiography of a Tomboy; and The Tomboy at Work. Gilder was the editor of Representative Poems of Living Poets ; Essays from the Critic ; Pen Portraits of Literary Women; and The Heart of Youth, an anthology; as well as the owner and editor of The Reader: An Illustrated Monthly Magazine.
The Society of American Artists was an American artists group. It was formed in 1877 by artists who felt the National Academy of Design did not adequately meet their needs, and was too conservative.
Minerva Josephine Chapman (1858–1947) was an American painter. She was known for her work in miniature portraiture, landscape, and still life.
Florence Helena McGillivray, also known as F H. McGillivray, was a Canadian landscape painter known for her Post-Impressionist style. Her family home was in Whitby, Ontario. She lived in Ottawa from 1914 to 1928. She was also a teacher. In 1916, on a visit to his studio, she encouraged Tom Thomson.
Florence Meyer Homolka was an American portrait photographer and socialite. She was married to the actor Oscar Homolka.
Maynard Dixon was an American artist. He was known for his paintings, and his body of work focused on the American West. Dixon is considered one of the finest artists having dedicated most of their art to the U.S. Southwestern cultures and landscapes at the end of the 19th-century and the first half of the 20th-century.
John Wheeler Leavitt was a prominent New York City businessman, founder of J. W. & R. Leavitt Company, eventually declared insolvent, and grandfather of American society portrait painter Cecilia Beaux, who frequently painted members of the family.
George Coleman de Kay was a naval officer. He was buried at St George's Church cemetery, Hempstead, New York.
Edward Winslow Ames Jr. was an American art historian, author, and museum director. His academic research focused on Victorian art, but he "also had a deep interest in Modernism and the art of his own period."
Ellen Emmet Rand was a painter and illustrator. She specialized in portraits, painting over 500 works during her career including portraits of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, artist Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and her cousins Henry James and William James. Rand studied at the Cowles Art School in Boston and the Art Students League in New York City and produced illustrations for Vogue Magazine and Harper's Weekly before traveling to England and then France to study with sculptor Frederick William MacMonnies. The William Benton Museum of Art at the University of Connecticut owns the largest collection of her painted works and the University of Connecticut, as well as the Archives of American Art within the Smithsonian Institution both have collections of her papers, photographs, and drawings.
Elizabeth Colomba is a French painter of Martinique heritage known for her paintings of black people in historic settings. Her work has been shown at the Gracie Mansion, the Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia University, the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts, the Musée d'Orsay, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Janet Rosamond de Kay Gilder, also known as Rosamond Gilder, was an American theater critic.
Alice Ruggles Sohier (1880–1969) American artist, known for paintings of figures, portraits, still life, and landscapes. She was an active artist between 1900 until around c.1959.
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