Abbott Henderson Thayer

American, 1849 - 1921

(not assigned)Boston, Massachusetts, USA

SchoolPortraiture

Biography(b Boston, MA, 12 Aug 1849; d Dublin, NH, 29 May 1921).
American painter and naturalist. He spent his youth in rural New England, where his earliest paintings were wildlife subjects, reflecting his interest in hunting and fishing. While in his teens Thayer achieved some success doing portraits of family pets, which he continued after a move to New York. He attended classes at the Brooklyn Art School and National Academy of Design, but in 1875 he settled in Paris, studying under Henri Lehmann and Jean-Léon Gérôme at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. While abroad he produced landscapes in the Barbizon style and genre scenes, but on his return to New York in 1879 he established himself as a portrait painter.
Thayer's earliest portraits were black-and-white illustrations of literary figures to accompany articles in Scribner's Magazine. However, Thayer's reputation was to be established primarily in his paintings of women. His fashionably dressed Mrs William F. Milton (1881; New York, Met.), with its subdued palette, careful modelling and elegant feminine accoutrements, demonstrates his mastery of the Parisian society portrait. Thayer was soon to reject such worldly images in favour of a more subdued, unadorned approach, as in The Sisters (1884; New York, Brooklyn Mus. A.), which reflects his oft-stated belief that serene, handsome women were sacred embodiments of moral virtue. Such concerns became more pronounced in later years, when Thayer portrayed his female subjects in Classical robes or supplied them with wings to emphasize their timeless and symbolic qualities, as in Seated Angel (1899; Chicago, IL, A. Inst.).
Thayer sketched and painted his children frequently. Following the mental deterioration and death of his wife in 1891, these portraits evolved into large allegorical tableaux, such as Virgin Enthroned (1891; Washington, DC, N. Mus. Amer. A.), in which his eldest daughter Mary poses as the Virgin, with his son Gerald and youngest child Gladys on either side as John the Baptist and Jesus. Such a work is evidence of Thayer's interest in the Italian Renaissance, though his loose handling of paint and lack of specific Christian iconography are firmly contemporary.
In 1901 Thayer and his family settled in Dublin, NH. From his house Thayer had a magnificent view of Mount Monadnock, which he often painted, for example in Winter Dawn on Monadnock (1918; Washington, DC, Freer). Much influenced by the writings of Emerson, who wrote a poem about the peak, Thayer regarded Monadnock as both a visual synecdoche of earthly experience and an emblem of earthly transcendence. Always painted in winter, these works feature the summary effects and calligraphic swathes of pigment reminiscent of Japanese painting and link the artist to Impressionist trends in America at the time.
Through his lifelong interest in natural history, Thayer developed a theory of natural camouflage in animals, which appears in its most complete form in the book Concealing Coloration in the Animal Kingdom (1909), nominally written by his son Gerald. Interspersed in the text are illustrations of various animals, which demonstrate their invisibility under certain environmental conditions. Thayer's precepts were challenged by some scientists and by Theodore Roosevelt, but his research brought the issue of camouflage before the public, and some of his theories were put to military use during World War II. A large collection of manuscript material relating to Thayer is in the Archives of American Art, Washington, DC. (Source: ROSS C. ANDERSON, "Abbott Handerson Thayer," The Grove Dictionary of Art Online (Oxford University Press, Accessed July 7, 2004), )

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