Abbott Handerson Thayer
Also Known as: Abbott H. Thayer, Abbott Thayer
Born:
Boston, Massachusetts 1849
Died:
Monadnock, New Hampshire 1921
Active in:
New York, New York
Dublin, New Hampshire
Scarborough, New York
Painter, best known for his idealistic and allegorical paintings of women as angels and madonnas. His interest in color and nature led to his writingConcealing Coloration in the Animal Kingdom (1909), the basis for camouflage techniques in World War I.
Joan Stahl American Artists in Photographic Portraits from the Peter A. Juley & Son Collection(Washington, D.C. and Mineola, New York: National Museum of American Art and Dover Publications, Inc., 1995)
"But never, with me, read between the lines, for there
"But never, with me, read between the lines, for there
is . . . nothing there." Abbott Thayer, quoted in Nemerov, "Vanishing Americans: Abbott Thayer, Theodore Roosevelt, and the Attraction of Camouflage," American Art, Summer 1997
When Abbott Handerson Thayer turned eighteen, his family moved from Keene, New Hampshire, to Brooklyn, where the thriving art and literary scene fed his imagination. For a time Thayer studied in Paris, and soon after his return to New York his career prospered. But his wife, Kate, suffered from extreme depression, and Thayer struggled to sustain his inspiration without her emotional support. The loss of Kate remained a source of sadness and he looked for strength in his children, whom he painted as allegorical and religious figures. The family moved to Dublin, New Hampshire, where Thayer painted outdoors and wrote articles for professional journals on his theories of animal camouflage. In 1909 he coauthored with his son, Gerald, a book that became an important resource for camouflage techniques during World War I. (Murray, "Abbott Thayer's Stevenson Memorial," American Art,Summer 1999)
Image Credits: National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian InstitutionThayer's unusual Dublin, New Hampshire, house speaks volumes about the painter. Built in 1888 on land provided by Mary Amory Greene, a direct descendant of the colonial portraitist John Singleton Copley, the two-story building sported several screened-in porches and was surrounded by a number of sleeping huts—small lean-to structures that broke down the harriers of traditional Victorian domestic space and encouraged a rustic, almost wild atmosphere. The unruly house and unusual artist were not without their contradictions. To the right of the front door, mounted on a bracket, stood a copy of Daniel Chester French's famous bust of Ralph Waldo Emerson—a symbol of the intellectual rigor expected of family and guests. Thayer was the patriarch of an extended family of blood relations, servants, and models who became year-round residents of Dublin in 1901. His career had begun much earlier, first as an animal painter and then as a student at the National Academy of Design in New York and the École des Beaux Arts in Paris. At the latter, he studied under Jean Léon Gérôme. After Thayer returned from Paris (1879), he began painting ethereal women and children and writing about natural history, particularly the development of animal coloration. Lost in the wild or in his vision of idealized female form, Thayer sought an alternative to the banality of the modern world.
William H. Truettner and Roger B. Stein, editors, with contributions by Dona Brown, Thomas Andrew Denenberg, Judith K. Maxwell, Stephen Nissenbaum, Bruce Robertson, Roger B. Stein, and William H. Truettner Picturing Old New England: Image and Memory(Washington, D.C.; New Haven, Conn; and London: National Museum of American Art with Yale University Press, 1999)
Back in New York he established a studio and commenced work on a series of highly idealized paintings of virginal American beauties garbed in flowing classical gowns and rendered in rich, painterly oils. The works fit well within the sentiment of the times, and the paintings were eagerly bought by like-minded patrons. John Gellatly acquired twenty Thayer virgins to add to his Dewing maidens, and Charles Lang Freer purchased a generous clutch as kindred spirits to his burgeoning Whistler collection. Unlike the iconic "Gibson girl," the assertive beauty delineated by Charles D. Gibson, Thayer's damsels remained passive and quietly decorative, even when endowed with wings.
In 1901, Thayer and his family settled in Dublin, New Hampshire, with a studio in full view of Mount Monadnock. There he began a number of studies of the local landscape, employing the tonal qualities of impressionist work. He also became interested in the principles of protective coloration observed in nature, a study that would be given practical application in the camouflage techniques developed during World War I.
He was chosen to join the Ten American Painters, organized in 1897, but decided to withdraw from the group before its first show. It has been remarked that Thayer's work is now the most outmoded of any of his contemporaries. However a few years back one of the most winsome of his "angels" achieved international prominence on the cover of Time magazine.
Abbott Thayer: The Nature of Art
Handerson Thayer (1849-1921), is recognized today for his ethereal angels, portraits of women and children, landscapes, and delicate flower paintings. A New Englander who expressed the spiritual in much of his work, he was known as a "soul painter." In his own time, his work was praised by critics even as it was popular with the public and sought after by collectors.Thayer's World
Thayer was born into a distinguished Boston family. In the 1880s and 1890s he was a leader in the New York art world. While he carried on a lively trade in portraits, he also began to paint allegorical figures, which had gained popularity among collectors with a taste for subjects from classical antiquity and the European Renaissance.In 1891, his first wife Kate Bloede Thayer died; her loss changed Thayer's art and his outlook on life in virtually every respect. Her family, intellectually and artistically distinguished German émigrés, had introduced Thayer to the romantic world of literature, music, and philosophy. The spiritual and idealist aspects of German philosophy, and its American counterpart in New England, transcendentalism, provided consolation. This idealism also prompted him to paint extraordinary figures that seemed to embody the perfection of beauty.In 1901, Thayer left New York and settled in Dublin, New Hampshire, joining a colony of artists, writers, scientists, and cultural figures living at the foot of Mount Monadnock. Rejecting the commercialism and the hectic pace of urban life, he built a family compound within the Dublin colony. He married his long-time friend, Emma Beach, and with his three children, they lived and worked in a complex of studios, barns, houses, gardens, and unheated sleeping huts. During this time he turned to more contemplative and even enigmatic subjects: portraits of close friends and family, meditative views of Mount Monadnock, and a series of angels.
An Amateur Naturalist
Thayer was an amateur naturalist and a passionate bird-lover. He believed that his professional training in color, value, and design, combined with observation of nature, gave him the tools to understand how animals disguise themselves from predators. He devoted considerable time and energy to defining, promoting, and defending his ideas on the subject.Thayer developed a love for the mountain that overlooked his studio. Through his efforts to protect the forests on the slopes of Mount Monadnock he became a staunch conservationist. To support that work, he founded the Thayer Fund which, through the National Audubon Society, paid for wardens to protect bird sanctuaries up and down the east coast.
For a complete online exhibition catalog:
For a complete collection of his work at the Smithsonian:
For a list of painting with more detailed explanation:
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