Alfredo Helsby

[1] He studied at The Mackay School, where his art teacher was the British painter, Thomas Somerscales, who stressed the importance of painting landscapes en plein aire.

For the rest of his life, he wrote letters to local newspapers, condemning vaccination and animal experimentation, and praising naturopathic medicine.

In 1911, he wrote Contra la vacunación obligatoria... (Against mandatory vaccination), dedicated to Georgina Hooper de Hammerton, a Chilean Theosophist who was also of English ancestry.

He returned to Chile in 1908, on the same ship carrying Fernando Álvarez de Sotomayor, the artist who would inspire the members of Generación del 13, and they became close friends.

Of a solitary disposition, he spent his final years alone (with his cat), in a small house in a thinly-populated area of La Cisterna, on the south side of Santiago.