Room in the Villa Sylvia

The inscription on the present work to Mrs. Curtis refers to the wife of Ralph W. Curtis, a fellow artist who Walter Gay met in Paris around 1876. Part of the prominent publishing family of Philadelphia, Curtis spent much of his life as an expatriate staying at family residences abroad, including the Palazzo Barbaro in Venice and, pictured here, the Villa Sylvia in Saint-Jean-sur-Mer, France. A watercolor of very similar composition entitled Fireplace, Villa Sylvia was included in the 1980 Walter Gay retrospective at New York University's Grey Art Gallery.