Page 180 - Bonhams Passkon and Philanthropy MET Mjuseum March 2024 Asia Week

Fig. 1 Art Students League Women’s Life Class [photograph], The Peter A. Juley & Son Collection, Photo-
graph Study Collection, Smithsonian American Art Museum. This photograph appeared in the Art Students
League 1907-08 course catalogue.

Helen Winslow Durkee Mileham (1880–1954)

Helen Winslow Durkee Mileham (1880–1954) was born to the spice
magnate and founder of the American Spice Trade Association,
Eugene W. Durkee (1850-1926), in Brooklyn. She completed her
undergraduate degree at Smith College before returning to New
York to continue her studies at the Art Students League (1910-1918),
where she also served as the League’s women’s Vice President
(1911-1918).
While there she received a scholarship from the League for her
exemplary work, and was later bestowed the Charlotte Ritchie
Smith Memorial Prize from the Baltimore Water Color Club in 1921.
She was a member of the American Society of Miniature Painters,
the Pennsylvania Society of Miniature Painters, and the National
Association of Women Painters and Sculptors. From 1907 through
the 1920s, she regularly exhibited her paintings. During World War I,
she paused her career to volunteer in France under the auspices of
the Young Men’s Christian Association, where she met her husband,
Captain Christopher John Mileham. Four paintings by Mrs. Mileham
are in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, to whom she
bequeathed them, along with two American pewter sauceboats, a
selection of Qing dynasty porcelains and snuff bottles, a number of
Islamic rugs, jewelry, and other works of art.

Fig. 2. In the Studio, 1916, by Helen Winslow Durkee Mileham,
Metropolitan Museum of Art

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