Helena de Kay Gilder, Rodman de Kay Gilder, ca. 1880s | Gilded Age American Portraiture

Artist/Maker: Helena de Kay Gilder (American, 1846–1916)
Medium: Pastel on paper, original gilded frame
Date: circa 1880s
Provenance: From the Gilder–Palmer Family Archive, Four Brooks Farm, South Lee, Massachusetts
Collection: Gilder Palmer Sanctuary Art & Memorabilia Collection

Price: $35,500 USD
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Expanded Description with Historical Context

This tender pastel portrait by Helena de Kay Gilder, wife of poet and editor Richard Watson Gilder, portrays their son Rodman de Kay Gilder with warmth, delicacy, and maternal affection. Rendered in soft pastel tones, the portrait reveals Helena’s extraordinary skill in combining psychological depth with refined draftsmanship—qualities that established her among the most respected women artists of the late nineteenth century.

A founding member of the Art Students League and a close confidante of Winslow Homer, Mary Hallock Foote, and Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Helena de Kay Gilder stood at the center of New York’s artistic and literary life during the American Renaissance. Her work bridged intimate domestic portraiture and the grand ideals of art and moral beauty championed by her husband, Richard Watson Gilder, editor of The Century Magazine.

This particular pose of Rodman, captured in the present pastel, was later used by both Helena de Kay Gilder and Augustus Saint-Gaudens in the sculptor’s celebrated bronze group portrait of Richard Watson Gilder, Helena de Kay Gilder, and their son Rodman, now held in the permanent collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The continuity between Helena’s drawing and Saint-Gaudens’s bronze underscores her role as both muse and collaborator within the Gilded Age’s artistic vanguard.

Housed in its original gilded frame and preserved by direct descent through the Gilder–Palmer family at Four Brooks Farm, this pastel has never before been publicly exhibited or offered for sale. It remains a luminous testament to the intertwined legacies of art, family, and American cultural history.

Historical Significance

Artist: Helena de Kay Gilder (1846–1916), co-founder of the Art Students League and pioneering female artist of the American Renaissance.
Sitter: Rodman de Kay Gilder (1877–1953), eldest son of Helena and Richard Watson Gilder; later husband of Louise Comfort Tiffany, daughter of Louis Comfort Tiffany.
Provenance: From the Gilder–Palmer Family Archive, Four Brooks Farm, South Lee, Massachusetts.
Medium & Design: Pastel on paper in original gilded frame; preparatory pose used by Saint-Gaudens for the Gilder Family Bronze (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).
Context: A rare surviving example uniting two great Gilded Age families—the Gilders and the Tiffanys—and linking Helena’s art directly to the sculptural legacy of Saint-Gaudens.