Richard Watson Gilder, Helena de Kay Gilder, and Rodman de Kay Gilder
Augustus Saint-Gaudens American
Between 1877 and 1880 in Paris, Saint-Gaudens completed around twenty informal, low-relief portraits of artists and friends, many of whom were part of his intertwined social and professional orbits. The reliefs reveal his preference for a shoulder-length profile format with personalized inscriptions and attributes. This compact multifigure portrait was the sculptor’s most ambitious to date, completed during the Gilder family’s extended trip to Europe. It depicts the journalist and editor Richard Watson Gilder (1844–1909) facing his wife, Helena de Kay (1846–1916), a talented painter and a founder of the Art Students League of New York, and their two-year-old son, Rodman (1877–1953).
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