The Gilded Lily Observed: A Rare Glimpse Into Private Worlds

The Portraits of Interiors of Walter Gay and Isabelle Rey

The very rich are very different from you and me, to expand on the familiar phrase.

That difference, enormous wealth, has enabled individuals possessing it to support the arts, and artists, for their own pleasure and for the envy of the world around them.

Emblems of their taste, power, social standing and lifestyle attest to the patronage of this class in every culture, in paintings, statuary, jewelry and bejeweled artifacts, interiors, and architectural wonders - home to them, Versailles to the rest of us.  

Every aspect of life is an opportunity to reveal their taste and to project their status lest someone miss the point.

No indulgence is out of bounds, every lily gilded, legions of handlers at the ready to address their every whim.

Two individuals, Walter Gay and Isabelle Rey, have something in common with this privileged group in a most unique way: they have had access to every room in many of their homes, but not as “servants”.

Both are renowned water colorists specializing in portraits of interiors, in a long tradition of recording the taste of the wealthy, two artists painting in different styles a hundred years apart.

Fortunate in their connections, in the form of Gay’s social circle of the Gilded Age of the 19th century, and Rey being referred to her clients by the pre-eminent French interior decorator of the late 20th century, they have enjoyed patronage and support on a scale that few artists have ever experienced.

I became enamored of them both through different circumstances.

Earlier in my life, while reading the February,1990 issue of Connaissance des Arts, I came across an article about Isabelle Rey.  I was in delighted shock as I read the article and discovered her exquisitely rendered watercolors of Yves St. Laurent and Pierre Berge interiors in Normandy and Marrakech. Breathtaking detail met my eye in photo after photo. Words can hardly describe my feelings upon finding her work.

My dear friend Shawn, familiar with my tastes and interests, several years ago recommended that I acquaint myself with the work of Walter Gay, leading to my doing just that. This was certainly an exciting find for me, to be introduced to Gay’s effortless mastery and impressionistic approach to gorgeous period interiors. Right up my alley.

Therefore, upon discovering Walter Gay, I was able to compare his very different approach to the same task, leading to my desire to bring their respective styles to an audience who might not be aware of their efforts as practitioners of a very precise art form.  

While photography presents an obvious modern option, paintings of elaborately decorated rooms have a certain cachet that very few can afford to underwrite, and, as a tradition of this class for hundreds of years, predate that technology in any case. Thus, its appeal to the highest echelons of society, no matter the time period. There is a genuine rarity to these portraits, as only the very wealthiest would ever have commissioned them.

The perception of grandeur and exclusivity must be preserved at all costs.

Gay’s interiors are slightly dreamy, mirroring the times, painted at the behest of Elsie de Wolfe, Edith Wharton, Henry Clay Frick and their set, recording the interiors of the late 19th and early 20th centuries in all of their splendor, in a style admired by the cognoscenti of the era.

Conversely, but no less beautifully realized, Rey’s interiors are photographic in their minutest detail, rendered exquisitely in painstaking watercolor techniques with just a touch of naivete that lends charm to the finished product, the artist of choice of St. Laurent, Oscar de la Renta, and Dodie Rosekrans, to name just a few of her distinguished clients.

We are thus privy to the taste of modern moguls and the magnificence of design masterpieces in their palazzi and mansions in the most precise and delectable detail, an interesting juxtaposition to the 19th century method of Walter Gay.

As examples of this very specific art form, both artists’ works are a window into a rarefied and closed world, a wonderful record of what only a few could ever imagine, and, through their interpretations, elevation of the tradition to the highest level. How fortunate we are to have their unique viewpoints.

Please enjoy!