The Courtship of Winslow Homer - letters reveal relationship with Helena de Kay

Magazine Antiques, Feb, 2002 by Sarah Burns

The most poignant letter is dated June 19 and bears the address of the Studio Building at 51 West Tenth Street. We can date this letter to 1872, the year Homer moved into the Studio Building. (8) In the letter he mentions his plan to spend a month in Hurley New York, with his artist friend Enoch Wood Perry (1831-1915). Several New York newspapers confirm that the two friends visited Hurley in June and July 1872. (9) In his letter Homer wrote:

My dear Miss Helena, Enclosed find photo's which are a failure. I keep one for company this summer. You may think it will be dull music with so faint a resemblance and so dolorous but it's like a Beethoven symphony to me, as any remembrance of you will always be.

He affectionately urged her to remember him through the long summer until they met again, and in closing he sent his regards to Mary Hallock and wrote, "believe me your most devoted, and true, and very sincere friend, Winslow Homer." What Homer meant by "photo's" is not clear. Perhaps they are of de Kay or perhaps of a sketch he made with her as the model. However, for the laconic Homer to compare her image with a Beethoven symphony suggests the intensity of his feeling. The sketch of Helena de Kay at the end of the letter (Fig. 5) says a great deal more than the stilted words.

Homer spent some time with de Kay that summer, although it is uncertain here they met. Possibly she visited Mary Hallock at Milton, which was only about twenty miles from Hurley An undated letter from Hallock to de Kay suggests that the meeting was at Palensville (now Palenville) in the Catskill Mountains where the de Kays spent their summer vacation. Helena de Kay and her mother had been with Mary Hal Hallock on the farm in Milton but then went off to the Palenville house--"Mt Home," as Hallock called it. She wrote: "What an advantage to have Winslow Homer around! You'll pick up arey [ever] so many crumbs of wisdom. I do think his pictures are very masterly looking and never trivial or 'pretty"' (10)

Homer's dated oil sketches of de Kay outdoors provide even better evidence of this encounter in 1872. One of them, Butterfly (P1. II), shows her in profile looking down at the brilliant monarch butterfly poised lightly on the back of her hand. Given the sketch in Figure 5 it is tempting to speculate that the butterfly is Homer's surrogate or emblem, fluttering near the heart he wishe to win.

In Summer Afternoon (P1. IV), also of 1872, de Kay's fan is now folded and hangs on a ribbon from her wrist. In photo phs (see Fig. 6) and the Homer portraits alike a certain elusiveness is found in every image of de Kay in the 1870s. She is almost always shown in profile and never engages the viewer, but with downcast eyes she seems intensely self-absorbed or excessively demure. Even in Plate IV she looks away A third painting in this group, Sunshine and Shadow (Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, New York City), shows a young woman lying in a hammock reading a book. The model bears less resemblance to de Kay for her hair is swept back differently and her eyes, looking up for once, seem to have a different set. The model might be de Kay but if so the unfamiliar three-quarter view of her face makes identification more difficult.