Helena DeKay and Maria Oakey were among the first women to study art at the Copper School and The National Academy in NYC in the early 1870s. Helena and Maria shared a studio together at a time when women were not expected to live on their own. They married.
Helena married Richard Watson Gilder, who became the editor of a very popular magazine called The Century and was a famous poet (at the time)
Maria married Thomas Dewing who became a famous painter
The two men were friends with Stanford White, a famous architect, and Augustus Saint-Gaudens, a famous sculptor of the time.
Stanford was a great womanizer (he got shot and killed later for fooling around) and had a bachelor pad in the city where he would throw parties for his male friends and had prostitutes swinging on swings and dancing on tables. Dewing and Saint-Gaudens had mistresses and probably partook of White's parties. It was said the Dewing had several affairs withe other artistic type women (perhaps Emma Lazarus' sister). Saint-Gaudens had one illegitimate son. Did I mention that Stanford was married as well?
These four men were close. Why do I think Richard did not participate in the swinging?
Because his children loved him? Because he went with his family to the summer house when the other three stayed in the city? Because he was a sentimental poet? Because Richard was closer to Mark Twain and Grover Cleveland, who never cheated on their wives? I hope to dig more with this new source of readable stuff I've found.
Stuff novels are made of.
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