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

Magazine Antiques, Feb, 2002 by Sarah Burns

(5.) David Tatham, Winslow Homer and the Illustrated Book (Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, New York, 1992), pp. 105-109, offered a detailed discussion of Homer's work on "The Courtin," including the likelihood that Konewka's silhouettes furnished Homer with a useful model.

(6.) Quoted in Victorian Gentlewoman, p. 105.

(7.) The eight letters from Homer to de Kay are in the Gilder manuscripts, Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, and are quoted here by permission. he last letter, written in 1886, is a formal thank you to "Mrs. Gilder" for alerting Homer to the opportunity of reproducing his work in the Book of American Figure Painters. The painter John La Farge (1835-1910) was de Kay's s special mentor in the 1870s.

(8.) Annette Blaugrund, The Tenth Street Studio Building: Artist-entrepreneurs from the Hudson River School to the American Impressionists (Parrish Art Museum, Southampton. New York, 1997), p. 75.

(9.) New York Evening Post, July 8, 1872; and New York Evening Mail, October 18, 1872.

(10.) Letter no.15, folio 14, box 6 (Foote papers).

(11.) Judith Walsh, "The language of flowers and other floral symbolism used by Winslow Homer," Magazine ANTIQUES, vol. 156, no. 5 (November 1999), p. 714.

(12.) Letters of Richard Watson Gilder, p. 56.

(13.) Charles de Kay to Helena de Kay, July 26, 1872 (Richard Watson and Helena de Kay Gilder papers, Archives of American Art, Washington, D.C., microfilm roll no. 285).

(14.) Walsh, "The language of flowers," p.713, suggests that de Kay's mother may have discouraged her daughter's interest in Homer.

(15.) Letters of Richard Watson Gilder, pp.58-60.

(16.) Cikovsky and Kelly, Winslow Homer p. 123. In the sonnet "Love Grown Bold," published in The New Day (New York, 1876), p. 15, Richard Watson Gilder wrote that the portrait was made before he ever met his wife. However, he was probably taking poetic license in this matter.

(17.) Hallock to Helens de Kay, 1869-1872, letter no. 16, folio 14, box 6 (Foote papers).

(18.) Hallock to Richard Watson Gilder, November 1873, letter A-2, scrapbook OS-i (ibid.).

(19.) Walsh, "The language of flowers," p.713.

(20.) Walsh reads Homers Moming Glades as an expression of Homer's sense that de Kay's elite status formed a barrier between them (ibid. p. 714).

(21.) Appletons' Journal, May 8, 1875.

(22.) Quoted in William Howe Downes, The Life and Work of Winslow Homer (1911; Dover Publications, New York, 1989), p.115. About Girl in the Orchard, see The American Collections (Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, in association with Harry N. Abrams, New York, 1988), p.4.

(23.) Mary Foote to Helena de Kay Gilder, January 1, 1910, folio 37, box 7 (Foote papers).