Water Lilies

Helena de Kay is better known for her role as a cultural tastemaker in the late nineteenth-century New York art world than for her paintings, yet she was as committed to both pursuits. In addition to training formally at the National Academy of Design, she studied privately with Winslow Homer and John La Farge. Water Lilies—sketch-like in treatment while compositionally refined—reveals her indebtedness to La Farge’s flower still-lifes of the 1860s. A magnetic personality, de Kay (later Gilder) greatly enriched the progressive cultural landscape of late nineteenth-century New York through many contributions, including establishing the famous Friday salons at the Gilders’ home near Union Square, The Studio; organizing a Saturday-morning sketch club; and co-founding both the Art Students League and the Society of American Artists. Her leading presence was directly responsible for the large number of women involved in those organizations.