Kay Sage

Katherine Linn Sage (June 25, 1898 - January 8, 1963), usually known as Kay Sage, was an American Surrealist artist and poet. She was born in Albany, New York the second daughter of a prosperous upper middle class family, Henry Manning Sage and Annie Wheeler Ward. She attended the Foxcroft School, in Virginia, where she became the life long friend of Flora Payne Whitney, heiress to the Whitney, Payne and Vanderbilt fortunes, and one of the founde... more

Katherine Linn Sage (June 25, 1898 - January 8, 1963), usually known as Kay Sage, was an American Surrealist artist and poet. She was born in Albany, New York the second daughter of a prosperous upper middle class family, Henry Manning Sage and Annie Wheeler Ward. She attended the Foxcroft School, in Virginia, where she became the life long friend of Flora Payne Whitney, heiress to the Whitney, Payne and Vanderbilt fortunes, and one of the founders of the Whitney Museum. Much of Kay's youth was spent traveling around Europe with her mother, a free spirit whose ample means allowed her to indulge an unquenchable wanderlust. Sage settled down in Rapallo, Italy, to pursue art studies in Rome in the early 1920s. In 1924 she met Prince Ranieri di San Faustino, an Italian nobleman who became her first husband. But the life of the idle rich did not satisfy her; after ten years in the social circuit she would later call "a stagnant swamp," she separated from her husband and began to pursue her... less