DALLAS, TX.- Histories are not created equally. We especially romanticize and obsess over the ones that tell us something about our current state. The American Gilded Age still haunts, scandalizes, and inspires us. The decades that flank the turn of the last century were packed with head-spinning innovations, massive personalities, fortunes won and lost, and the terrifying frictions and dizzying connections that arise when the old meets the new. Countless movies, TV series and books continue to mine the era for signposts about how we've ended up where we are — about why we value certain ideas and what we've learned.
As with any history, there are the players and then there are the players. Students of history understand that often the most significant figures that shaped our past went about their work quietly, transgressively and even playfully. World-shifting invention is not always loud. We generally think that the Gilded Age was centered around families like the Vanderbilts and the Astors, but extraordinary wealth was only ever a part of the story. America's art and literary world exploded alongside technological innovation, and New York City was its epicenter.
Historians have long considered the significance of the era's and the region's artistic legacy in American life — our stateside avant garde — and Helena de Kay and Richard Watson Gilder, a married couple who cultivated an expansive creative circle, were at the very center of it.
Richard Watson Gilder was the editor-in-chief of the illustrated periodical Scribner's (and later the Century), and Helena de Kay was a gifted artist; their homes and studios in New York City and Massachusetts were the stomping grounds of such luminaries as Winslow Homer, Stanford White, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Cecilia Beaux, Samuel Clemens and many more. Through his immensely successful publications, Gilder shaped an entire American sensibility of writing, art and illustration by championing such greats as James McNeil Whistler, John Singer Sargent and Saint-Gaudens, Mary Cassatt, Thomas Moran, Thomas Eakins, and Frederic Remington. De Kay, a one-time student of Homer (his iconic portrait of her is in the collection of the Thyssen Bornemisza Museum in Madrid) helped launch the Arts Students League and the Society of American Artists, and, salon-style, brought together writers, painters, sculptors and actors who debated the latest developments in art world. "With her weekly Friday night gatherings, Helena de Kay effectively crafted an environment that allowed [her husband] Gilder to become entirely ensconced in the New York contemporary art scene," writes Columbia University art historian Page Knox. "The Gilders played a uniquely progressive role in the late nineteenth century, participating in the meteoric rise of print media, helping to establish and promote a new American art world, supporting female artists, illustrators and critics, and acting as the cultural tastemakers of their time."
Heritage Auctionswill present the first and only comprehensive access to the couple's estate, including precious artworks and the personal possessions of the family and their famous friends, and the much-coveted paintings and drawings of Helena de Kay herself. The collection has remained in the family for more than a century. The Gilded Age: Property from the Collection of Richard Watson Gilder and Helena de Kay Gilder opens for bidding online January 20 and the live auction takes place February 10.
To get a better picture of the couple, perhaps we should start with their portraits as created by Wyatt Eaton and Cecilia Beaux. Beaux is widely considered one of the finest woman painters active in America at the turn of the century and is commonly ranked alongside John Singer Sargent and Mary Cassatt as one of the most significant portrait painters in American history. "Beaux's masterful and harmonious Portrait of Richard Watson Gilder is a replica of the artist's seminal portrait of Richard Watson Gilder from 1902-3 that is part of the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, D.C.," says Aviva Lehmann, Senior Vice President of American Art at Heritage. "Beaux created this reductive portrait as a gift for her close friends Richard and Helena, as both a token of affection and of gratitude for initiating her career."
Wyatt Eaton, the Canadian-American figure painter and co-founder of the Society of American Artists created his Portrait of Mrs. Richard Watson Gilder (Helena de Kay) as a quietly fond portrait of his composed and smiling friend. It communicates the warmth and trust of true friendship. So close were the two artists, that Helena thought nothing of adding flowers to the work in an effort to brighten the composition.
The historic significance of this event may be centered on a selection of paintings and drawings by Helena de Kay: Never before has her work been presented for sale to the public and only a handful of her paintings have been privately collected by major institutions, including one currently on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in its exhibition New York Art Worlds, 1870-1890. Helena, a true "super-connector," was central to this world, though she wasn't bombastic about self-promotion and instead threw her weight behind the careers of her more famous friends. In spite of or because of this, de Kay's works are of ever-increasing interest to the public, and they back up their myth-making import with a sure-handed confidence and charm. Both Portrait of Dorothea and Water Lilies show de Kay's ease with oil paint, and Flower Study, early work brings us into de Kay's rangy play with watercolor and pencil on paper. Helena's sketches, landscapes, and botanical studies, in her signature relaxed composition, join this event. De Kay imbues her work with the intimacy of late-night conversations in the studio. It just so happens that her closest friends were the era's greatest artists. By all accounts, they had endless affection for Helena and her work.
The rather bohemian and expansive set of friends whom Richard and Helena hosted at their townhouse and studio on East Fifteenth Street in Gramercy Park, as well as at Four Brooks Farm, their rural estate in The Berkshires, is known to this day as "The Gilder Circle." It's difficult to know if these figures had any idea that their shared chemistry and output would make such a beloved and enduring history. Mementos, gifts, and items that exemplify the love and connection between these figures are in this event. According to the family, artist Winslow Homer gave this gold ring to Helena. Its inscription: 'Ami Pour la Vie.' ("Some have speculated that de Kay was the woman whose rejection confirmed Homer's status as an inveterate bachelor," writes historian S. Burns.) This extraordinary carved wood block, circa 1860, is attributed to John La Farge; it depicts a sea monster in a wave copied from a Japanese print. La Farge was an early adopter of the Japanese style — possibly one of the first artists in the U.S. to do so.
It's hard to overstate the tender familiarity these objects had with Gilder friends and family. Helena's wedding dress and trousseau, circa 1874, are here, and the lot includes her kid gloves and a monogrammed corset cover. The recognizable navy cape worn by Richard in the portrait by Cecelia Beaux that's in the National Portrait Gallery is here as well: It's in good condition, trimmed in black and lined in crimson. A packed wedding chest belonging to Helena, circa 1874, is here, and contains table articles, charms, picture frames, photographs, and coins. Delicate works on paper by Beaux — portraits of Gilder family members and friends, are here, as well as Helena's own silver pocket watch, engraved with her initials HdK. This is just an introduction to the nearly 200 items in this event, and in April, in an additional auction without reserve, Heritage will offer the Gilders' historic summer home, Four Brooks Farms, visited by Gilder friends Grover Cleveland, Mark Twain, Louis Comfort Tiffany, Winslow Homer, and the rest. The 159-acre estate is in Tyringham, Massachusetts, Berkshire County, and includes a main house and guest house, with expansive pasture land plus four barns, livestock pens, a walled garden with spring-fed plunge pool, nature trails, sparkling brooks, and duck pond. The house's scrolled pillars are believed to have been designed and gifted to the family by famed architect Stanford White himself. How's that for piece of history? The very kind of rich and magnificent American history that Mark Twain might describe as "dazzling...a bewildering marvel."
