Monday, February 7, 2022

 My New Book Has Arrived!!!!     Click Here for an Introduction

 Click Here for an Introduction

The Best of Friends by Dan McNay


Helena de kay Gilder was an active member of a close 
knit group of women artists who attempted a formal
art education at Cooper Union and then at the 
National Academy of Design in the 1870s and 1880s. 
She was bisexual in a time when there was little 
acceptance, and had two serious relationships with 
women before allowing men to court her. She and 
another woman were the first in New York City to 
have their own studio as independent women artusts. 
Her life was a constant struggle against others bent 
on their appropriation of her visual and emotional 
presence. She was the subject of several paintings by 
Winslow Homer and Cecila Beaux, and a stainglass 
window by John La Farge. She was fictionalized in a 
number of novels by Henry James and others. Her 
career was stymied by the sexist and misogynist 
society that surrounded her.