* * 7W£ METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART .*• . js^r ABBOTTHTHAYER MEMORIAL EXHIBITION MCMXXII I ABBOTT HANDERSON THAYER MEMORIAL EXHIBITION Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016 https://archive.org/details/memorialexhibitiOOthay '( 75 )- Self-Portrait THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART «m > — — I i I i I t J * f I A, * * t + * * >s I + I I + >s f t I I * I E E I I a i MEMORIAL EXHIBITION OF THE WORK OF ABBOTT HANDERSON THAYER NEW YORK MARCEI 20 THROUGH APRIL 30 MCMXXH COPYRIGHT BY THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART MARCH, 1922 Of thin Catalogue one thousand additional co/iies with changes were printed by Bruce Rogers and William Rdwin Radge COMMITTEE ON THE EXHIBITION Francis C. Jones, Chairman E. H. Blashfield Thomas W. Dewing William C. Brownell Barry Faulkner George de Forest Brush Daniel C. French C. C. Burlingham John Gellatly Bryson Burroughs Charles A. Platt Royal Cortissoz Edward Robinson Gerald Thayer LENDERS TO THE EXHIBITION Charles Lansing Baldwin Estate of Samuel Bancroft, Jr. Victor G. Bloede Boston Museum of Fine Arts John F. Braun Charles C. Burlingham Timothy Cole Mrs. Thomas Millie Dow Dr. Theodore Dunham George J. Dyer Mrs. H ENRY H. F AY Mrs. W. W. Fenn Professor R. T. Fisher Dr. Willard B. Force John Gellatly Miss Mary Amory Greene Mrs. Hendrick S. Holden Estate of Walter Hunnewell William James Miss Louise L. Kane Dana Kittredge William G. Mathewson Mrs. William F. Milton National Academy of Design George S. Palmer Mrs. Bruce Porter Miss Alice L. Sand Mrs. J. Montgomery Sears Smith College The Misses Clara F. and Bessie G. Stillman Miss Ellen J. Stone Professor Henry Taber Estate of Abbott H. Thayer Wellesley College Mrs. E. M. Whiting Worcester Art Museum An Anonymous Lender PREFACE When the Trustees of The Metropolitan Museum decided to hold a loan exhibition of the works of Abbott Handerson Thayer , they invited the collaboration of some friends and admirers of the artist , who agreed to serve on a committee of arrangements . To this committee , in particular to Gerald Thayer , John Gellatly and Royal Cortissoz, has fallen a great part of the work of selecting the exhibits and preparing the catalogue. The Museum gratefully acknowledges its obli- gation to the committee in this enterprise , and on behalf of its visitors thanks the owners of the paintings and drawings , whose generosity and public spirit have made the exhibition possible . Through their cooperation the Museum has been enabled to assemble as representative a showing of Thayer s work as could well be brought together. The one highly impor- tant group of paintings unfortunately lacking is that from the Freer Collection. This group it was impossible to obtain for the present exhibition , owing to a clause in the will of the late Charles L. Freer forbidding the removal of works of art from the Freer Gallery , Washington , D. C. The cost of publishing this catalogue has been largely met by the subscription of a friend of the Museum. TABLE OF CONTENTS Committee on the Exhibition Page VII Lenders to the Exhibition VII Preface IX Introduction XIII Catalogue 1 Illustrations 17 / INTRODUCTION Appreciation of the work of Abbott Thayer is heightened if we regard it in perspective, taking into consideration the state of American art when he began his career. Inness, La Farge, Whistler, Vedder, and Winslow Homer were all his seniors. But he was more closely allied to them than to the men of his own generation. There was a decisive moment in the history of Ameri- can art in which an old point of view gave place to a new one. It fell in the ’70’s, when we discovered Europe for purposes of training. We went in for craftsmanship then, an object which many of us have pursued ever since. This choice has promoted precious gains, but they have been more favorable to the develop- ment of representative art than of creative art; the ’70’s ushered in the triumph of the brilliantly painted morceau. Thayer, who was nothing if not a man of original genius, made his own choice and it ran counter to the prevailing tide though he, too, was nominally swept into that tide. Proceeding to Paris in 1875, when he was twenty-six years old, he joined in the search after craftsmanship, yet preserved intact the almost antithetical spirit which, as I have said, allies him to the seniors aforementioned. It was the spirit of the painter who is never professionalized into an arid sophistication, in whom technique remains subser- vient to the idea, whose genius steadfastly preserves its spiritual force, keeping itself “unspotted from the world.” This, in fact, is the distinguishing characteristic of all that is finest in Ameri- can art. Our school is the more essentially national because it has never been one of organization. We have been not only un- aided but unhampered by tradition. The influence of the fore- fathers, of men like Copley and Stuart, with the academic habit XIII ]-*- INTRODUCTION of eighteenth-century England behind it, long ago faded away. The masters who have made our artistic history have been those with something of their own to say, and peculiarly personal ways of saying it. Whistler, living in the environment of Europe, coming into close contact with Courbet and with the Impres- sionists, taking into his consciousness such diverse modes as those of Japan and Velasquez, nevertheless ranges himself as the inventor of the “Nocturne,” an absolutely new-minted type of design. Inness traveled in Italy and France, was aware alike of Claude and Poussin and of the Barbizon school, yet he beat out a style having no precedent. Winslow Homer painted as though the schools of Europe had never existed. John La Farge, who was saturated in the traditions of them all, went on to affirm the individuality of a born colorist. Originality, in short, is the corner-stone of American art. Our painting is most in character when it has a certain almost primitive freshness, when it is new and unspoilt. Thayer offers an outstanding proof of this contention. The constructive elements in an artist’s formative period are sometimes curiously submerged in the work of his prime. From his youth Degas was an impassioned disciple of Ingres. But in the intensely modern productions by which he is known the influence of his great predecessor is discernible only in beauties of draftsmanship. The fruits of Thayer’s pupilage are even less apparent. When he went to Paris he entered the atelier of Gerome and there sometimes seems to me to have been some- thing almost droll in the subjection of our visionary American to one of the most unimaginative of all French academicians. Thayer, at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, appears incongruity itself. And still the discipline did him enormous good. It strengthened *>[ xiv INTRODUCTION beyond question his ability to draw. He could always draw like an angel, if he chose to do so. But it is important to keep in mind the circumstance that he would never lose himself in the cultivation of drawing for its own sake; draftsmanship would always be for him nothing but a means to an end. For the same reason I pass over as virtually negligible the ambitions of the animal painter which engaged him on his return from Europe, as they had, indeed, before he went abroad. If the early works of an artist are of interest it is usually because, in one way or an- other, they prefigure his major works. It is so in Thayer’s case only in a limited degree. The backgrounds in his old cattle- pieces point to the mastery which he was to achieve in landscape. I have seen a “Nature Morte” of his, painted when he was only nineteen, which was not only drawn very skilfully, but in form, color, and texture disclosed amazing precocity. All this I would maintain, however, is beside the point. Thayer began to realize himself, really to function as an artist, only when he abandoned animal painting, not long after his return to America, and dedi- cated himself to pictures, not portraits, of women. This exhibition, varied as it is in its contents, might never- theless be described as constituting a tribute to one ideal — Thayer’s ideal of the glamour of womanhood. Leonardo, the supreme master of expression, played in countless drawings with the mysterious beauty of woman. In the “Mona Lisa” he left that beauty more baffling than ever. For Thayer the same im- mortal theme meant the same long and wonderful adventure. He is not precisely inscrutable as Leonardo was, and as Saint- Gaudens was in the famous Adams monument. You cannot say of a single one of Thayer’s women that “Hers is the head upon which all ‘the ends of the world are come.’ ” The American is *^[ XV ]-*«- INTRODUCTION too American for that. Woman for him is neither a Madonna nor a sibyl. She is profoundly a human creature. He raises her humanity to a higher power by bringing out its spiritual traits. I asked him once to explain the meaning of an angelic figure of his and he replied: “How you set me talking! As to what my pictures mean, you see now, exactly. I want the image of one I worship to become visible for all time to this world — voila tout /” In another letter he develops his point of view so fully that I must quote it at length : “The violin, whose strings ring whenever their note is sounded by an outside instrument, is pure symbol of the poet. In the poet, cumu- lative images of every form of beauty begin in earliest infancy to occupy the brain, till, in his early maturity, these have become true touchstones, like the violin string. Let the painter once look upon a person who has, beneath no matter how many surface defects, one dominant greatness — purity at heart and fiery love of truth and beauty — and in his own heart the image of such a personality wakes into brilliant ringing clearness and takes the helm, saying: ‘Watch this being ! Thou wilt surely see, now and then, the being she really is (it’s a she now!) come forth and be fully in sight. Watch, then, and take in how she looks, for in those aroused moments she dominates the whole face and body, ruling all their details into her heavenly form.’ Now he who in this way comes to know her looks, thereafter waits, no matter how long. When he finds himself at the end of his last supply he waits, as it were, outside her window, sure that when she once more stands there in his sight he will quickly see how to go on with his pic- ture of her. Dear Cortissoz, this is absolutely the way I work. You delineate it almost clearly. It is because you see it that I feel I could crystallize you a little. “Right you are, alas; the whole trade of art and literature is for the -*-[ XVI ]-h- INTRODUCTION time off the planet. Man, finding himself up against that (if he knew it) greatest blessing, the obvious impossibility of ever understanding ex- istence, will forever swing between periods of worship and periods like our present one. He is like a frog in a tub; he can see the light and jump up at it, but never jump out, and when he tires of this he finds that searching the tub’s corners still offers no escape. So with man, his epochs of worship will always be followed by a period — such as we are now somewhere near the end of — of self-deluding digging, egged on by the elation of unearthing so many of the never before dreamed of tools that God evidently uses — gravitation, steam, electricity, radium, etc. “In due time man will again tire of this hope and again be the simple worshiping know-nothing. His cosmos theories will forever be on the same principle as the theories of a worm, hatched in an apple and still in the apple, might be of the apple’s external aspect. The world is now all for what they call science, and they weigh music, painting and poetry by what it can do in this field. Or, say, man is a child that awakes, out of the grass, and gazes awhile at the toys his parents have set about him, till, wider awake, he begins to work them and learn what they can do. Elated at finding out some of the stunts the light- ning toy can do and what the steam one, etc., he comes to feel very big and forgets that he doesn’t know, and can’t, where they came from. So, for the time, there lowers on his horizon no wholesome reminder that he is forever (thank heaven) stumped. “The horrible Nemesis that lies in wait for this individualism is the monkeyfiedness of to-day’s craftsmen. Of old, each apprentice strove merely to help some beautiful picture to get born and placed where it would help the world, and this habit of self-subordination attended each of them in his subsequent masteryears. Behold, now, the whispers creep through the crowd that self must assert itself, and a change begins, growing till ‘I, I, I! See how well I can do it!’ has entirely sup- planted ‘See how beautiful it is !’ And then behold these egos all down at the monkey level. Like monkeys they have looked, unseeing, at -*-[ XVII ]-K- INTRODUCTION their master’s service, till they catch up the brush to show that they can do it, too. Like the ape, no longer seeing what this act of painting was making, when Gozzoli or Lippi held the brush, they paint and paint. None of them sees that — whether or no it is something to boast of to be able to turn a back-somersault, or paint an actually delusive counterfeit of one more real shop-girl, when there are more than plenty always to be seen wherever you look — it has no resemblance to being the means of erecting before men’s sight the crystal type of any desir- able attribute.” He alludes to the cumulative images of the poet. That is what his works are. And I would extend the figure to cover not only his pictures of women but his landscapes and his studies of flowers. Lowell said after hearing one of Emerson’s later lec- tures that he felt as if “something beautiful had passed that way.” Thayer’s paintings give you that impression. Their charm is curiously independent of technique, though the technique in them is often beautiful. Is there not, I repeat, something almost amusing in the thought of the painter of these pictures as a pupil of Gerome? That master of composition must have given him some ideas as to the orderly spacing of the facts placed upon a canvas. Thayer probably couldn’t have arranged the five fig- ures in his mural decoration at Bowdoin College so well if he had not studied the art of design in his young manhood. In his pictures the figure is always rightly placed, effectively posed, and in some of the larger works, like the great “Caritas,” Thayer’s pattern has a monumental dignity recalling the grand style of the Renaissance. He could be the masterly workman. There are phases of this exhibition to be commended to the student of technique. But the long letter I have just quoted is the letter of a man of moods, meditative, waiting on his inspira- *►>[ xviii ]-*• INTRODUCTION tion, and that is the Thayer of the paintings. They are the un- studied outgivings of creative imagination. Mood was indispensable to Thayer. Sometimes in looking at such a canvas of his as the 4 ‘Head of a Young Man” you think first of just his power as a painter, of just his command over form, but presently you think even more of the spiritual beauty with which he invests his theme. His dependence upon mood makes chronology a matter of singular unimportance in analy- sis of his work. His own view of the subject comes out in a letter written to me in the spring of 1916, when the war was raging, the war which filled his mind and to which his discoveries in the art of camouflage gave him a specially close relation.* “All well here,” he writes from Monadnock, N. H., “and truly I have done an advanced figure of a girl. It is always silly to think or say that one’s last work is progress. So many traits are at work maturing themselves, especially in the attempts of a man ad- vanced in years. He may gain, as I seem to, in accomplishment , while his earlier things remain the most valuable — sweetest- flavored, perhaps. My efforts for the Allies still occupy a lot of my energy but really the preoccupation seems to help the pic- tures to get born without being mauled by my life-long vice of morbid over-straining.” That is very like Thayer in its detach- ment. He saw every one of his problems as something new, a new leap upon achievement. The “mauling” to which he alludes is immediately understandable. Scattered all through the work * Readers who wish to investigate Thayer’s work as a naturalist, applying his re- searches to artistic ends, should turn to the summary of his discoveries, “Concealing Coloration in the Animal Kingdom,” written by his son, Gerald H. Thayer, with an in- troductory essay by the artist himself. The Macmillan Company, 1909 . The New York Tribune of August 16 , 1916 , contains an essay of Thayer’s on the application of his dis- covery to the defensive science of war. *v>[ XIX INTRODUCTION of his career there are passages at variance with the magnificent authority which you recognize in, for example, the marvelously painted nude, the great “Figure Half-Draped.” It is more par- ticularly with reference to that commanding exercise in tech- nique, and, after that, with the whole body of his work in mind, that I would glance at the injustice Thayer does to himself in that word “morbid.” There never was a sweeter, wholesomer painter. Wistful his figures are, and sometimes sad, but they are all sharers in an extraordinary nobility. It is in their fineness that his women are angelic. His children breathe the fragrance and purity of flowers. Never was he more the poet than in his inter- pretations of the exquisiteness of youth. It is above all things in the beauty that he created that Thayer left a great heritage to American art. Royal Cortissoz ( XX ]m- CATALOGUE CATALOGUE OF PAINTINGS ARRANGED IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER WITH DATES, APPROXIMATE OR EXACT 1 PORTRAIT OF A DOG 1868 Oil on canvas: h. 3 5%; w. 24% inches. Signed: A. H. Thayer. Lent by Mrs . E. M. Whiting. 2 PASSENGER PIGEONS 1868 Oil on canvas: h.18; w. 14 inches. Signed: A. H. Thayer 1868. Lent by Albert Milch. 3 TIGER’S HEAD About 1872 Oil on canvas: h.27 ; w . 22 inches. Signed: A. H. Thayer. Lent by Victor G. Bloede. 4 THE OLD LION About 1872 Oil on canvas: h .25; w. 361 inches. Lent by the Estate of Samuel Bancroft , Jr. 5 PLAYING SICK 1874 Oil on canvas: h.12; w.16 inches. Signed: Abbott H. Thayer. Lent by Miss Alice L. Sand. 6 “WHO SAID RATS?” 1874 Oil on canvas: h.12; w.16 inches. Signed: Abbott H. Thayer. Lent by Miss Alice L. Sand. 7 CROSSING THE FERRY 1875 Oil on canvas: h.32; w. 24 inches. Signed and dated: A. H. Thayer 1875. Lent by Charles C. Burlingham. 8 AT THE MARKET Paris, 1875 Oil on canvas: h.16; w. 20 inches. Signed and dated: A. H. Thayer. Paris 1875. Lent by the Estate of Abbott H. Thayer. CATALOGUE 9 THE DONKEY Paris, 1876 These little Paris pictures were done in spare moments dur- ing the artist’s four years at the ‘Beaux-Arts,’ under Gerome. Oil on canvas: h.23§; w.321 inches. Signed and dated: A. H. Thayer. Paris 1876. Lent by Mrs. W. W. Fenn. 10 PORTRAIT OF JOE EVANS Paris , about 1877 Oil on canvas mounted on board: H.19J; W.15J inches. Signed: for Joe Evans from A. H. Thayer. Illustrated. Lent by Charles C. Burlingham. 11 CATTLE 1878 In Artists of the Nineteenth Century and Their Works, a book by Clara Erskine Clement and Laurence Hutton, pub- lished forty years or more ago, we read: “Thayer, Abbott H. (Am.). Born in Boston in 1849, and brought up in the country, where he became familiar with the brute creation, the painting of which has been his specialty.” The first nine paintings in the present list, and also Nos. 11 and 13, are representative of the phase and period of Thayer’s work here referred to. Among the drawings and watercolors by him on exhibition in Gallery 25 may be seen still earlier examples of his representations of the “brute creation,” including a watercolor of a brook trout done when the artist was eleven years old, in the year 1860. Oil on canvas: h. 22; w. 18 inches. Signed and dated: A. H. Thayer 1878. Lent by Miss Ellen J. Stone. 12 PORTRAIT OF MISS ANNE PALMER 1878 Oil on canvas: h. 21 f; w. 18f inches. Signed and dated: A. H. Thayer 1878. Illustrated. Lent by Charles Lansing Baldwin. ■*-[ 2 ]-*- CATALOGUE 13 LANDSCAPE WITH CATTLE 1879 A woodcut of this picture was made by Timothy Cole. Oil on canvas: h. 24; w. 32 inches. Signed and dated: A. H. Thayer 1879. Illustrated. Lent by Timothy Cole. 14 BABY ASLEEP ( a study ) 1879 William Henry Thayer, 2nd; the artist’s first son. Oil on canvas: h. 12f ; w. 16 f inches. Signed: A. H. Thayer. Lent by the Estate of Abbott H. Thayer. 15 HEAD OF THE ARTIST’S FATHER About 1879 Dr. William Henry Thayer, physician; born in Boston; practised in Keene, New Hampshire, and Brooklyn, N. Y. ; Sur- geon of the 14th New Hampshire Volunteers in the Civil War. Lent by Professor R. T. Fisher. Not exhibited. 16 PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST’S SISTER 1879 Sue Thayer (Mrs. E. M. Whiting). Oil on canvas: h.23; w.19 inches. Signed: A. H. Thayer. Illustrated. Lent by Mrs. E. M. Whiting. 17 SLEEPING BABY 1880 William Henry Thayer, 2nd. Lent by the Estate of Abbott H. Thayer. 18 PORTRAIT OF MISS ANNIE HOE 1880 Oil on canvas: H.14J; w.12 inches. Illustrated. Lent by Charles C. Burlingham. 19 PORTRAIT 1881 Mrs. William F. Milton. One of the artist’s earliest com- missions for a portrait in oil. Painted in Pittsfield. Oil on canvas: h.32; w.24 inches. Signed and dated: Abbott H. Thayer 1881. Illustrated. Lent by Mrs. William F. Milton. [ 3 > CATALOGUE 20 WINTER LANDSCAPE (a sketch) About 1881 Peekskill, N. Y. Oil on canvas: h.20; w.13| inches. Signed: A. H. Thayer. Lent by the Estate of Abbott H. Thayer. 21 PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG LADY 1881 Oil on canvas: h.20|; W.16J inches. Signed and dated: A. H. Thayer 1881. Illustrated. Lent by John Gellatly. 22 PORTRAIT, LADY IN WHITE 1883 Miss Bessie Stillman. Oil on canvas: h.36; w.28 inches. Signed: A. H. Thayer. Lent by the Misses Clara F. and Bessie G. Stillman. 23 THE SISTERS 188k Miss Bessie and Miss Clara Stillman. Oil on canvas: H.54J; w. 36 1 inches. Signed: A. H. Thayer. Lent by the Misses Clara F. and Bessie G. Stillman. 24 PORTRAIT-STUDY About 188k Oil on canvas : h. 29 ; w. 25 inches. Inscribed : A. H. Thayer by E. B. T. Lent by the Estate of Abbott H. Thayer . 25 FIGURE, HALF-DRAPED About 1885 There is a temptation to call this picture Melpomene , or by some such muse-name; but record is lacking of any such inten- tion on the artist’s part. He seldom named a picture; and most of those which have acquired distinctive titles have been named by others — sometimes with his knowledge and approval — after leaving his hands. The present picture has a curious history. Painted in New York City in the ’80’s, it was unearthed, in some old box of canvases and forgotten sketches, in the barn at the artist’s home at Monadnock, New Hampshire, in the sum- mer of 1920. No one, apparently, of the artist’s family had re- ■**“[ 4 ]■ CATALOGUE membered its existence during those thirty years or more, and it would seem that the artist himself had lost track of it. Oil on canvas: H.71J; w.48 inches. Signed: A. H. Thayer. Illustrated. Lent anonymously. 26 MOTHER AND CHILD 1886 The artist’s first wife, Kate Bloede Thayer, and his son Gerald, aged two years. Oil on canvas: h.36; w. 28 inches. Signed and dated: Abbott H. Thayer. Peekskill 1886. Illustrated. Lent by John Gellatly. 27 WATER-LILIES About 1886 One of the few flower pictures by Thayer. Oil on canvas: h.16; w.12| inches. Illustrated. Lent by Professor Henry Taber. 28 PORTRAIT OF A LITTLE GIRL 1886 Daughter of Mrs. Henry H. Fay of Boston. Oil on canvas: h.16; w.22 inches. Signed: Abbott H. Thayer. Lent by Mrs. Henry H. Fay. 29 PORTRAIT OF ALICE FREEMAN PALMER President of Wellesley College, 1882-1887. Oil on canvas : h. 50 ; w. 36 inches. Signed : Abbott H. Thayer. Illustrated. Lent by Wellesley College. 30 GIRL IN WHITE 1888 or 1889 Margaret Greene, of Boston; a descendant of the painter Copley. Oil on canvas : h. 37 f ; w. 29 \ inches. Signed : A. H. Thayer. Illustrated. Lent by Miss Mary Amory Greene. ■*»-[ 5 ]-*- CATALOGUE ANGEL About 1889 The artist’s daughter Mary. Oil on canvas: h. 36; w. 28 inches. Signed: Abbott H. Thayer. Illustrated. Lent by John Gellatly. 32 WINGED FIGURE 1889 Oil on canvas: h.50|; w.36 inches. Signed and dated: Abbott H. Thayer 1889. Illustrated. Lent by Smith College. 33 BROTHER AND SISTER 1889 The artist’s daughter Mary and son Gerald. Oil on canvas: h.36; w.28 inches. Signed and dated: Abbott H. Thayer New York 1889. Illustrated. Lent by John Gellatly. 34 PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG GIRL 1891 Miss Mary Hunnewell of Wellesley (Mrs. Williams). Oil on canvas: h. 44J; w. 31 inches. Signed and dated: Abbott H. Thayer 1891. Illustrated. Lent by the Estate of Walter Hunnewell. 35 VIRGIN ENTHRONED 1891 The artist’s children — Mary, Gerald, and Gladys. Oil on canvas: H.72J; w.52J inches. Signed: Abbott H. Thayer. Illustrated. Lent by John Gellatly. 36 HEAD OF A BOY 1891 Raphael Welles Pumpelly, son of Raphael Pumpelly, the geologist and explorer. Oil on canvas: H.15J; w.13| inches. Signed: Abbott H. Thayer. Illustrated. Property of The Metropolitan Museum of A rt. 6 ]-<«- CATALOGUE 37 PORTRAIT OF A LITTLE GIRL About 1891 Daughter of J. Montgomery Sears of Boston. Oil on canvas: h.541; w.38 in. Signed : Abbott H. Thayer. Lent by Mrs. J. Montgomery Sears. 38 PORTRAIT About 1891 Miss Faith Mathewson of Washington. Oil on canvas: h.24; w.19 inches. Signed: Abbott H. Thayer. Illustrated. Lent by William G. Mathewson. 39 PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST’S FATHER About 1891 Dr. William Henry Thayer. Oil on canvas: h. 18; w. 14 inches. Signed: Abbott H. Thayer. Lent by the Estate of Abbott H. Thayer. 40 PORTRAIT OF A LITTLE BOY About 1891+ George Phillips of Boston. Lent by George W. Phillips. 41 PORTRAIT OF A THOROUGHBRED HORSE, “HARBOROUGH” About 1891+ Harborough was a gift to the artist from his life-long friend, S. Dana Kittredge of Hastings-on-Hudson. Oil on canvas: h.24; w.20 inches. Signed: Abbott H. Thayer. Lent by S. Dana Kittredge. 42 A BRIDE About 1895 Oil on canvas: h.21; w.17 inches. Signed: Abbott H. Thayer. Illustrated. Lent by John Gellatly. { 7 } CATALOGUE 43 PORTRAIT 1896 Josephine Balestier (Mrs. Theodore Dunham). Oil on canvas: H.35J; w.25 inches. Signed: Abbott H. Thayer. Lent by Dr. Theodore Dunham. 44 ROSES About 1896 Oil on canvas: h.221; w.31i inches. Signed: Abbott H. Thayer. Illustrated. Lent by the Worcester Art Museum. 45 CARITAS 1897 Central figure Elise Pumpelly (Mrs.T. Handasyd Cabot), daughter of Raphael Pumpelly. Oil on canvas: h.84|; W.54J inches. Signed: Abbott H. Thayer. Illustrated. Lent by the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. 46 MY CHILDREN About 1897 An unfinished group; the artist’s children — Mary, Gerald, Gladys. Oil on canvas: H.86J; w. 61| inches. Inscribed: My Children Abbott H. Thayer Never to receive one pin point of re- touching see back A. H. T. Lent by John Gellatly. 47 ROSES About 1897 Oil on canvas: h. 25; w.28f inches. Signed : Abbott H. Thayer. Lent by Miss Louise L. Kane. 48 PORTRAIT 1897 Bessie Price. Clarke Prize, National Academy of Design. Oil on canvas: h.28; w.19| inches. Signed and dated: Abbott H. Thayer 1897. Illustrated. Lent by Mrs. Hendrick S. Holden. 8 ]-k- CATALOGUE 49 YOUNG WOMAN 1898 The same model, Bessie Price (Mrs. Fred. Beaulieu), as in Stevenson Memorial, the Winged Figure, No. 69, the Angel, No. 54, and the Portrait, No. 48. Oil on canvas: h.39|; w.31f inches. Signed: Abbott H. Thayer. Illustrated. Property of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 50 CORNISH HEADLANDS 1898 Near Saint Ives, Cornwall, England. One of the distant promontories is perhaps Gurnard’s Head. Oil on canvas: h. 30; w. 40 inches. Signed and dated: Saint Ives 1898 A. H. Thayer. Illustrated. Lent by John Gellatly. 51 ROSEMARY 1898 Mary Dow, daughter of Thomas Millie Dow, of Scotland and Saint Ives, Cornwall, England. Oil on canvas: h.28; w.21f inches. Signed: A. H. Thayer. Illustrated. Lent by Mrs. Thomas Millie Dow. 52 PORTRAIT OF ELSIE PILCHER 1898 Stepdaughter of Thomas Millie Dow. Oil on canvas: H.25J; w. 19^ inches. Signed: A. H. Thayer. Illustrated. Lent by Mrs. Thomas Millie Dow. 53 SELF-PORTRAIT 1899 Oil on canvas: h.30; w .25 inches. Signed and dated on back: Abbott H. Thayer April 1 1899 N. A. D. Lent by the National Academy of Design. 54 ANGEL (Left unfinished; worked on again, 1921) 1899 One of the last things the artist touched, a few weeks before his death. Oil on panel: h. 521; w. 381 inches. Signed : A. H. Thayer. Illustrated. Lent by the Estate of Abbott H. Thayer. -[ 9 } CATALOGUE 55 HEAD OF SHANDY 1901 Son of Dr. E. Channing Stowell, of Dublin and Marlboro, N.H. Oil on canvas: h.21; w. 19 J inches. Signed: Abbott H. Thayer. Lent by George S. Palmer. 56 MARY About 1902 The artist’s daughter. Oil on canvas : h. 24 ; w. 22 inches. Signed : Abbott H. Thayer. Illustrated. Lent by the Estate of Abbott H. Thayer. 57 PORTRAIT OF A LADY About 1902 Mrs. William B. Cabot of Boston. Oil on canvas : h. 39 \ ; w. 32 inches. Signed and dated : Abbott H. Thayer 190(F) (indistinct). Illustrated. Lent by J ohn Gellatly. 58 PORTRAIT OF BEATRICE 1902 Oil on canvas: h.63; w.32 inches. Signed and dated: Abbott H. Thayer 1902. Illustrated. Lent by Mrs. Hendrick S. Holden. 59 STEVENSON MEMORIAL 1903 One of the several attempted or projected ‘memorials,’ in paint, to Robert Louis Stevenson, whose work and personality the artist boundlessly admired and loved, although he had never met him. Of the somewhat various attempts at this ‘memorial’ painting, the present picture is the only one which eventuated as such. The picture My Children, No. 46, was at one time intended as a Stevenson Memorial. The beautiful Irish girl with brooding eyes made a fit subject for a Stevenson angel. Vaea, the inscription on the rock, is the name of the mountain overlooking Stevenson’s home in the Samoan Is- lands, in a grave upon whose summit “Tusitala,” as they called him, was laid to rest, in accordance with his expressed -►*-[ 10 ]-<* CATALOGUE wish, by the natives, who had to hew a track through the jungle to fulfil this last request of their beloved master. (See the account of Stevenson’s burial at the end of the second vol- ume of the Vailima Letters.) “Under the wide and starry sky, Dig the grave and let me lie. Glad did I live and gladly die, And I laid me down with a will. “This be the verse you grave for me: Here he lies where he longed to be; Home is the sailor, home from the sea, And the hunter home from the hill.” Oil on canvas: h.81§; w. 60 inches. Signed and dated: Abbott H. Thayer 1903. Illustrated. Lent by John Gellatly. 60 GLADYS About 1905 The artist’s daughter. Oil on canvas: h .25; W.23J inches. Signed: Abbott H. Thayer. Illustrated. Lent by the Estate of Abbott H. Thayer. 61 PORTRAIT OF A BOY 1905 Henry Thayer Whiting, the artist’s nephew. Oil on canvas: h. 24|; w. 22^- inches. Signed and dated: begun 1903 Abbott H. Thayer Monadnock 1905. Illustrated. Lent by Mrs. E. M. Whiting. 62 PROFILE, YOUNG WOMAN About 1906 The artist’s niece, Eleanor Fisher. Oil on panel: h.20|; w. 15 finches. Signed: Abbott H. Thayer. Lent by the Estate of Abbott H. Thayer. CATALOGUE 63 PORTRAIT (Unfinished) 1908 Eleanor Fisher (Mrs. Laurence Grose), the artist’s niece. Oil on panel: h.36; w.28 inches. Signed and dated: Abbott H. Thayer Monadnock 1908. Lent by Mrs. Bruce Porter. 64 GIRL ARRANGING HER HAIR (Worked on again, 1921) A. E. W. (Mrs. Gerald Thayer). About 1909 Oil on canvas: h.25; w.24 inches. Signed and dated: A. H. Thayer 1918. Illustrated. Lent by the Estate of Abbott H. Thayer. 65 ANGEL OF DAWN (Finished 1918) About 1909 A. E. W. (Mrs. Gerald Thayer). Oil on canvas: H.102J; w.62f inches. Signed and dated: Abbott H. Thayer 1919. Illustrated. Lent by the Estate of Abbott H. Thayer. 66 YOUNG WOMAN IN FUR COAT About 1910 A. E. W. (Mrs. Gerald Thayer). Oil on canvas: H.44J; w. 26 § inches. Signed: Abbott H. Thayer. Illustrated. Lent by Dr. Willard B. Force. 67 LADY IN GREEN VELVET (Finished 1918) About 1910 A. E. W. (Mrs. Gerald Thayer). Gold medal and first prize, International Exhibition, Car- negie Institute, Pittsburgh, 1919. Oil on canvas: h.49|; w.371 inches. Signed: Abbott H. Thayer. Illustrated. Lent by the Estate of Abbott II. Thayer. -v>[ 12 ]-*- CATALOGUE 68 HEAD OF A MAN (sketch) About 1911 Richard Thornton Fisher, Professor of Forestry at Har- vard, the artist’s nephew. Oil on cardboard: h.22|; w.17J inches. Inscribed: to Bill Janies Abbott H. Thayer. Lent by William James. 69 WINGED FIGURE 1912 Oil on canvas: h. 50|; w. 38^ inches. Signed and dated: Abbott H. Thayer 1912. Illustrated. Lent by John F. Braun. 70 PORTRAIT OF A LITTLE GIRL 1917 Elizabeth Beaulieu. Oil on panel: H.43J; w. 21 ^ inches. Signed and dated: Abbott H. Thayer June 20 1917. Illustrated. Lent by the Worcester Art Museum. 71 PORTRAIT 1917 A. E. W. (Mrs. Gerald Thayer). Oil on canvas: h.211; w.17 inches. Signed and dated: Abbott H. Thayer 1917. Illustrated. Lent by Charles Lansing Baldwin. 72 WINTER SUNRISE, MONADNOCK 1918 From the artist’s home at Dublin, New Hampshire. He painted several versions, both large and small. Oil on canvas: h.54; w. 63J inches. Signed: Abbott H. Thayer. Illustrated. Property of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 73 HEAD OF A BOY 1918 Townsend Martin. Oil on canvas: h. 21; w.17 inches. Signed: Abbott H. Thayer. Lent by George J . Dyer. H 13 >+ CATALOGUE 74 BOY AND ANGEL About 1917 to 1920 This the artist was inclined to regard as his most significant and finest composition. He tried several versions, of which the present is the most finished. The boy is Townsend Martin. Oil on panel: h.61|; w.49 inches. Signed and dated: Abbott H. Thayer April 2, 1920. Illustrated. Lent by the Estate of Abbott H. Thayer. 75 SELF-PORTRAIT 1919 Oil on panel : h. 22 J ; w. 24 inches. Signed and dated : Abbott H. Thayer 1919. Frontispiece . Lent by the Estate of Abbott H. Thayer. 76 WINTER SUNRISE, MOUNT MONADNOCK 1919 Oil on canvas: h.531; w. 621 inches. Signed and dated: Abbott H. Thayer 1919. Illustrated. Lent by the Estate of Abbott H. Thayer. 77 HEAD 1921 The artist’s daughter; done in the early spring of 1921, a few weeks before the artist’s death. Oil on panel: H.18f; W.14J inches. Inscribed: A. H. Thayer by E. B. T. Lent by the Estate of Abbott H. Thayer. 78 MONADNOCK ANGEL 1920 and 1921 Thayer’s last picture; unfinished, the idea of putting his cher- ished theme of Monadnock Sunrise into this picture as a back- ground having come to him in the winter or early spring of 1921. Possibly his last touches of creative work, but a few weeks before his death, were on this picture. Oil on canvas: h.91; w.59f inches. Inscribed: A. H. Thayer by E. B. T. Illustrated. Lent by the Estate of Abbott H. Thayer. ■*»-[ 14 ]-*«- DRAWINGS A REPRESENTATIVE GROUP OF DRAWINGS by Abbott Handerson Thayer not here listed in detail is on exhi- bition in Gallery 25, the room among the paintings galleries regularly devoted to drawings. ILLUSTRATIONS . , ' ; - •►»( 10 )~C Portrait or Joe Evans Portrait of Miss Anne Palmer / 13 )«+ Landscape with Cattle / 16 )~e Portrait of the Artist’s Sister '1 •*-( 18 )-+ Portrait or Miss Annie Hoe /• +»( 19 )~t- PORTRAIT +-( 21 )«-*- Portrait of a Young Lady *►>( 25 Figure Half-Draped ? . > ■ ‘ •*-( 26 )-h- Mother and Child f *v>( 27 )-«-*• Water Lilies ■*»-( 29 )-h- PORTRAIT OF ALICE FREEMAN PALMER ?■ 30 )«+ Girl in White —( 31 )«♦ Angel -►<-( 32 )-*• Winged Figure +-( 33 )~e Brotiier and Sister •►>( 34 )-** Portrait of a Young Girl ' * 35 )-** Virgin Enthroned ■ ' -K 36 )-«- H EAD OF A Boy *^( 38 )•*<* Portrait ;Y..' PVv\; 42 )■*<* A Bride *►»“( 44 )-*«- Roses • « .tLI ■►*-( 45 )-««- Caritas ->->( 48 PORTRAIT ■*-( 49 )-*- Young Woman ' ■*»-( 50 )-*«- Cornish Headlands -*-( 51 )-*<• Rosemary / 52 )-*«- Portrait of Elsie Pilcher -n-( 54 )-*<- Angei « ■*»■(• 56 )-*h- Mary *^ > ( 57 )-*<• Portrait of a Lady ■ ■ HI ^/T gyM jl ■*»-( 58 )“**■ Portrait of Beatrice *>^( 59 )-*«* Stevenson Memorial •»( 60 )-*-«- Gladys +-( 61 )~e Portrait of a Boy +-( 64 )-*• Girl Arranging Her Hair ■*»-( 65 )-*<- Angel of Dawn ->*-( 66 )-h- Young Woman in a Fur Coat -►»-( 67 )-h- Lady in Green Velvet +»( 69 )*t- Winged Figure ->~( 70 )-+ Portrait or a Little Girl { -K 71 )- Portrait 72 )-*«* Winter Sunrise Monadnock ■**-( 74 )-«* Boy and Angel •*-( 76 )«-*- Winter Sunrise, Mount Monadnock / ■»-( 78 )-*- Monadnock Angel ' Head of the Artist's Son (Drawing) The Artist’s Son ( Drawing ) / 7 , S' y Head of a Child {Drawing) Girl Arranging Hair {Drawing) Portrait of Mary ( Drawing ) A Head {Drawing) MM Sketch for the Virgin {Drawing) Sketch for a Portrait {Drawing) A Girl Standing {Drawing) 1 , Monadnock {Drawing) Study for Caritas {Drawing) r GETTY CENTER LIBRARY 3 3125 00777 5634