Quite a few years ago, I was preparing a lecture on Winslow Homer’s life and art. I found Helena because Homer’s first biographer had discovered a watercolor portrait of Homer that was done by Helena’s mother. That eventually led me to Helena’s and Richard’s Journal that they kept from 1874 to 1877. It has never been published.
Year: 2019
Our Characters Relatives
Helena’s mother. She married at 15, and was the daughter of Joseph Rodman Drake, the poet.
Helena’s younger brother, Charles De Kay. An art critic, poet, fencing master and intellectual.
Jenny Gilder, Richard’s younger sister. a journalist, critic, and novelist and playwright.
Our Characters – In The Beginning
Richard is lying in the hammock behind her. This was what their Studio looked like when there were first married.
Our Characters to Come
Helena and Richard Gilder at their summer house in the Berkshires in the 1880s