Helena de Kay Gilder

This delicate portrait miniature of Helena de Kay Gilder suggests a close friendship between artist and sitter. It relates to a similarly intimate Ann Goddard Morse watercolor on paper of de Kay Gilder reading from around the same time. Morse was born in Providence, Rhode Island, and is believed to have trained first in Boston, then at New York’s Cooper Union School of Design for Women as well as the Art Students League, where she likely befriended de Kay (later Gilder). Like many women of her day, Morse specialized in works on paper and decorative design. In 1880, she won fourth prize in the popular contest for lithographer Louis Prang’s Christmas Card competition with an Aesthetic Movement vignette—a design so well received that it was also reproduced in the form of a "very handsome and unique mantlepiece representing four kneeling children with doves" by the Boston Terra Cotta Company.