Helen Swift Neilson

Helen Swift Neilson (1869 – 1945) was an American writer and art collector.

Neilson was the daughter of the meatpacking entrepreneur Gustavus Franklin Swift. She became the second wife of the British politician and writer Francis Neilson, with whom she founded the weekly paper The Freeman in 1920.^[1]

She is perhaps best known for her book about her parents called My Father and My Mother.^[2] Neilson died in Chicago.

She bequeathed several notable paintings to the Metropolitan Museum of Art:

• 
  Portrait of a Young Woman with a Fan, by Rembrandt
• 
  The Lovesick Maiden, by Jan Steen
• 
  Portrait of Janet Law, by Henry Raeburn
• 
  Portrait of Mrs. Thomas Pechell (Charlotte Clavering, died 1841), by John Hoppner
• 
  Portrait of Thomas Pechell (1753–1826), by John Hoppner

References