Date: Fri 28-May-1999

Publication: Ant

Author: JUDIR

Quick Words:

Thayer-Abbott-May

Full Text:

AA LEAD: Abbot Thayer: The Nature Of Art

(with cuts)

By Steven May

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Abbott Handerson Thayer is best known today for his

idealized likenesses of winged figures, but as an appealing and informative

exhibition of over 60 works at the National Museum of American Art through

September 6 reveals, he also created perceptive portraits, landscapes, still

lifes and delicate nature studies.

A major figure in the so-called American Renaissance movement, Thayer's work

covered a range of turn-of-the-century artistic approaches, from Gilded Age

society likenesses to allegorical figures to awe-inspiring mountainscapes.

A strange but gifted individual, full of energy and new visions for

art-making, Thayer (1849-1921) dedicated his career to painting "pictures of

the highest human soul beauty." A devotee of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry

David Thoreau, he was a transcendentalist who found purity, truth and beauty

in pristine nature.

Combining eccentricities with genius, Thayer merged his dual interest in art

and science in his oeuvre, which was permeated with his profound sense of the

spiritual. "Thayer's art combines Renaissance idealism with a modern concern

for science," says Elizabeth Broun, director of the National Museum of

American Art. "He shows us how America in the Gilded Age was poised between a

reverence for past traditions and a new empirical approach."

"Abbott Thayer: The Nature of Art" was organized by Richard Murray, senior

curator at the National Museum of American Art (NMAA). Celebrating the 150th

anniversary of the artist's birth, it is the first major exhibition in three

decades to examine the work of this influential, but now nearly forgotten,

painter.

Many of the works on view were collected by John Gellatly, one of Thayer's

most generous patrons, and later given to what is now the NMAA. Reflecting the

high esteem in which Thayer has been held in the art world, other works were

drawn from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Art

Institute of Chicago, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art,

Albright-Knox Art Gallery, and Addison Gallery of American Art, at Phillips

Andover Academy. Important paintings and objects were also loaned by members

of the Thayer family.

A companion exhibition, "Winged Figures," will be on view from June 5-February

19, 2000 at the Smithsonian Institution's Freer Gallery of Art, which cannot

loan its works. It brings together for the first time in a half century three

monumental winged-figure paintings commissioned by Thayer's leading patron,

Charles Lang Freer, specifically for the gallery. The highlight will be the

familiar "A Virgin" (1893), which sets the artist's daughter Mary leading son

Gerald and daughter Gladys, all draped in classical robes, against winglike

clouds.

Thayer's work emerged from the American Renaissance, that late Nineteenth

Century backlash against a modern world shaped by science and technology,

which found inspiration in the art and culture of the Italian Renaissance and

classical Greece and Rome. In keeping with those traditions, Thayer became a

specialist in portraying the idealized female form.

His ethereal figures, usually swathed in concealing drapery, conveyed high

moral and spiritual messages and seemed, by costume and setting, to be removed

from the contemporary world. "In...[his] ambition to achieve an aesthetic

ideal of the pure, noble and intelligent woman," art historian James K.

Kettlewell has observed, "Thayer belonged to what could be identified as a

specific school of like-minded American artists within the American

Renaissance movement, all of whom were his friends: the sculptors Daniel

Chester French and Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and the painters Thomas Dewing and

George De Forest Brush."

Kettlewell wrote the publication accompanying Transcendent Universe: The

Paintings of Abbot Henderson Thayer, at the Hyde collection in Glens Falls,

N.Y. in 1996. Hyde Collection curator Randall Suffolk wrote at the time that

Thayer's "paintings provide a distinctly American response to the art of

painting which, in an age primarily defined by relatively personal, subjective

representation, sought to articulate examples of transcendence."

Thayer's work, highly praised by contemporary critics, was eagerly sought by

collectors of his time. But over the years it became increasingly difficult

for the public and even art scholars to identify with his canvases. Even his

accomplished mountainscapes tended to get lost amidst the plethora of other

equally fine paintings of the New England landscape. With so much attention

focused on the realism of artists such as Winslow Homer and Thomas Eakins,

Thayer's offbeat art faded into the shadows.

As a result, Thayer has receded from public view in the decades since his

death, making this thoughtful and comprehensive display of the breadth of his

achievements doubly welcome.

"Thayer is a curious double-figure, a man of extremes and contradictions,"

according to curator Murray. The manner in which he organized the show

underscores how the artist, in Murray's description, "embodied elegance and

rusticity, enthusiasm and depression."

The four sections into which "The Nature of Art" is divided demonstrate the

range of Thayer's oeuvre and the diversity of his outlooks. "Portraits and

Self-Portraits" documents the evolution of the artist's style from elegant

early likenesses to later psychological studies. "Angels and Ideal Figures"

features Thayer's idiosyncratic paintings of allegorical women. "Still Life

and Concealing Coloration" explores his theories and art involving design and

color in nature and wildlife. "Landscapes and Mount Monadnock" reflects

Thayer's evocations of the scenery around him, especially the awe-inspiring

mountain overlooking his home in Dublin, N.H.

Thayer was born into a distinguished old-line Boston family. His father, a

physician, moved his family first to Keene, N.H. and later to Brooklyn. Having

shown early aptitude for drawing animals, young Thayer studied at the Brooklyn

Academy of Design and exhibited work at the National Academy of Design.

In 1875 he married Kate Bloede, daughter of a prominent German emigre

intellectual and newspaper editor. The couple left soon thereafter for Paris,

where Thayer enrolled at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. Five children were born

over the next decade, of whom three lived beyond infancy. Thayer was deeply

devoted to his wife and children.

Returning to America in 1879, Thayer became a professional artist,

headquartered in New York, but often moving his residence around. For a time

in the 1880s he had a studio in a building also used by Dewing and French. He

became a leader in the New York art world and a popular portraitist and

painter of traditional landscapes.

Drawing on his French academic training, Thayer used nude or semi-nude figures

to evoke the glories of the classical past. His large "Half-Draped Figure"

circa 1885, a seated Venus de Milo-like figure with a sultry expression, was

clearly designed to make a major artistic statement.

His striking double portrait of "The Sisters" (1884), showing Bessie and Clara

Stillman, daughters of banker and art collector James Stillman, suggested a

complex familial relationship by means of the unusually close placement of the

figures and their pensive expressions.

Somewhat later, employing a visual vocabulary reminiscent of fellow Bostonian

John Singleton Copley in the Eighteenth Century, Thayer posed young women in

light dresses against dark backgrounds, such as "Portrait of Bessie Price"

(1897). This young Irish maid also modeled for a similarly composed likeness,

"Young Woman" (1898).

Over time, Thayer's portraits advanced from straightforward depictions of

individuals to perceptive character studies, like the insightful "Michael

Spartali Stillman," which he began in 1905, then set aside, and completed in

1915. "There are souls emanating out of his likenessses," says Murray, who

likens them to the sculptural work of his friend Saint-Gaudens.

Thayer also created a number of self-portraits, starting with elegant,

self-confident images and ending with stark, unsparing, personalized studies.

Increasingly introspective after his first wife's death in 1891, he probed

deeply into his own mental state and personality in later likenesses.

In several self-portraits at the end of his career Thayer presented himself

full-face, as a haggard, balding figure, devoid of any softening surrounding

elements. These are unsparing, rugged images, in keeping with the rustic

persona he adopted at his New Hampshire home.

The illness and early death of Thayer's beloved first wife, Kate, prompted new

directions in his art. In the late 1880s, as her depression and tuberculosis

worsened, he began to paint their three children in classically-inspired

compositions showing them as symbols of beauty and perfection. The spiritual

and idealist elements of German philosophy that he acquired through the Bloede

family, added to his Yankee transcendental beliefs, consoled him about his

wife's fate and prompted his angelic portraits. In Thayer's art, winged women

came to represent both spirituality and death, even the triumph of the soul

over death.

His first winged figure, "Angel" (1887) was a luminous portrait of his

doe-eyed 11 year-old daughter Mary, resplendent in a white dress and bearing

enormous white wings. In the tightly-composed "Brother and Sister (Mary and

Gerald Thayer)" (1889), she appeared in thoughtful tandem with her sibling. In

"Virgin Enthroned"(1891), painted after his wife's death, Mary appeared as a

Madonna-like figure watching over her brother and sister.

Several of the elegant gold frames in the exhibition were designed by Thayer's

friend, renowned architect Stanford White. They particularly heighten the

effect of works such as "Angel" and "Winged Figure" (1889).

The most famous of Thayer's paintings in his lifetime, "Caritas" (1894-95) is

another enormous, enigmatic, beautifully painted and composed canvas featuring

an idealized mother-and-children triumverate. Much praised in its day, it

conveyed messages of solace and hope to turn-of-the-century viewers.

Thayer made no attempt to explain his enigmatic figures, saying only that

their wings were meant to create "an exalted atmosphere" that lifted them out

of the commonplace. "They come near to us, there is a lovely hint of the human

and intimate in them, yet they are not of the earth; they have a mystic air,

and glance that fathoms the beyond," summarized one art critic of his day.

Mary Thayer served as the centerpiece for "My Children (Mary, Gerald and

Gladys Thayer)" (1893-97), in which she appeared in a virginal white gown

towering over her siblings. The artist originally intended this as a monument

to Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), whose work Thayer

greatly admired. Mary initially held a plaque with the initials "R.L.S." on

it, but when told the picture did not seem to have much to do with the late

author, Thayer turned the plaque into a laurel wreath and named the painting

in honor of his children.

His eventual tribute, the "Stevenson Memorial" (1903), completed a few years

later, remains one of his more complex compositions. It shows a bright, winged

figure in a white gown seated against an ominously dark background, suggesting

angelic goodness surrounded by the shadows of evil and death, themes that

Stevenson explored in his writings.

The author's name and coat of arms originally appeared across the top, but

Thayer later painted them out, leaving only the word "VAEA," which refers to

the mountain in Samoa where Stevenson was buried. The angel is depicted

sitting on a rock marking the famed writer's far away grave. Highly popular

with critics and the public, the "Stevenson Memorial" traveled to major

museums around the country after it was unveiled.

Murray's examination of x-rays and infra-red photographs, have disclosed

different compositions and multiple alterations beneath visible layers of

paint on several canvases. Murray says this new information will enable

scholars to establish relationships among Thayer's paintings and lead to new

interpretations of his work.

Thayer's few surviving still lifes owe much to the influence of French

Impressionism. As in "Roses" (circa 1896), they usually depict flowers in a

bowl or on a table, rendered with subtle colors and diffused light. Created

quickly with fluid application of paint, they are a far cry from the

painstaking approach he employed to paint angels and portraits, which often

took years to complete.

About the time his first wife's health began to fail in the late 1880s, Thayer

met Mary Greene, a descendent of John Singleton Copley. She became a student

and helped arrange for the Thayer family to summer in rustic Dublin, N.H.,

where her mother, Mary Copley Greene, was establishing an art and literary

colony.

Soon after Kate Thayer's death in 1891, the artist married a long-time family

friend, Emma Beach. They became permanent residents of Dublin in 1901.

Turning his back on social conventions, Thayer cultivated the look of a rugged

outdoorsman and reveled in the benefits of fresh mountain air. The family

lived and he worked in a complex of houses, barns, unheated sleeping huts and

gardens. Wild animals were welcomed as household pets in the main house, which

was never heated, even in winter.

After dinner, according to artists Cecilia Beaux and Rockwell Kent, who

visited Dublin, each member of the household left for his or her individual

lean-to in the surrounding forest. In this eccentric ambience, Thayer

increasingly turned to contemplative, even puzzling subjects, whether

portraits, winged figures or mountain views.

The painter, nonetheless, remained in touch with the world of art and ideas,

maintaining a lively correspondence with well-known contemporaries ranging

from Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) to President Theodore Roosevelt to patrons

Freer and Gellatly.

Instinctively drawn to nature, Thayer found many subjects of interest in the

flora and fauna of New Hampshire. His immersion in the natural world and his

thorough academic training in color, design and composition led him to study

how animals use natural camouflage to conceal themselves from enemies. He

concluded that all animal markings, even the most conspicuous -- such as

flamingos, giraffes and zebras -- serve the purpose of concealment.

With his son Gerald, Thayer published his ideas in Concealing-Coloration in

the Animal Kingdom (1909), which detailed the principles of "Countershading,"

"Ruptive Color and Pattern," and "Mimicry" by which animals disguise

themselves.

His ideas were rejected by many, including Roosevelt. The one-time friends

exchanged acrimonious letters over the issue, leading to a bitter falling out.

Nevertheless, Thayer's theories were adapted during World War I to disguise

equipment and soldiers. He was, says Richard Meryman in an excellent article

on the subject in Smithsonian Magazine (April 1999), "the father of

camouflage."

Thayer's early landscapes, such as "Spring Hillside" (circa 1889) were bright,

sunlit, apparently spontaneous images, in contrast to the darker brooding

views of his later canvases.

Traveling with his family to St Ives, England, Thayer painted "Cornish

Headlands" (1898), which he executed on a site in a matter of hours. The

painter called it his favorite canvas, because there was "no Abbott Thayer in

it." Most of his paintings, he acknowledged, were worked and reworked for

years.

After the turn of the century Thayer focused on Mount Monadnock, the grand

outcropping that overlooked his studio and family compound in Dublin. His

vision of the majestic mountain's grandeur traced back to the transcendental

views of Emerson and Thoreau, who had also stood in awe of the same mountain.

Thayer developed a broad painting style emphasizing fresh, brisk brushwork and

thinly painted washes that created the illusion of great distances. Over the

years he portrayed the mountain in all seasons, filling each with the

personality of that time of year, but came to favor a view of bright winter

sun striking the snow-capped peak. This is exemplified by one of the

exhibition's highlights, "Monadnock" (circa 1917).

Thayer became a passionate conservationist, funding programs to protect bird

sanctuaries, habitats and wildlife up and down the East Coast, and campaigning

vigorously to save Mount Monadnock from commercial development.

In culminating paintings of his career, he joined two of his abiding passions

-- winged figures and natural environments -- in canvases which featured

angels hovering protectively over areas he sought to save in Florida, on Cape

Cod and Mount Monadnock.

"Thayer was working with the modern notion that the key to understanding his

paintings is in the process of their creation," says curator Murray, "much

like the Abstract Expressionist ideas in the 1950s."

When Thayer died in 1921, John Singer Sargent said, "Too bad he's gone. He was

the best of them." Thayer's son scattered his ashes on his beloved Mount

Monadnock.

Writing in 1930, the esteemed painter Beaux, who had stayed with the Thayers

at their "forest retreat" in Dublin, called Thayer "the peer of Winslow Homer

as a revealer of the illusive aspects of Nature, that we have often before us

and never really see." She expressed particular admiration for his Mount

Monadnock paintings as well as his idealized figures. "The material of his

painting, modeling, and the surface of his form were rich in quality," she

wrote. "How stimulating is his passage from dream to substance! How commanding

his vision!"

Recalling the spartan nature of Thayer's life in his sylvan New Hampshire home

and his warm hospitality, Beaux added that "I shall always regret...that I did

not hear him in class, for his utterance, by word, was as fine and subtle in

its simplicity as was his compelling personality."

In the years around World War I the Metropolitan Museum of Art held memorial

exhibitions for art titans who passed away during that era, including

Saint-Gaudens, Homer, Eakins, George Bellows, Sargent and, in 1922, Thayer.

That high ranking for Thayer has faded in the eight decades since then, but

this welcome exhibition -- the product of work by the National Museum of

American Art -- will help restore luster to his reputation.

In the final analysis, Thayer proves to be a skilled, idiosyncratic painter,

who bequeathed to posterity enigmatic, idealized figures and evocative

mountainscapes that will stand the test of time. Kudos to Murray and the NMAA

for giving this neglected artist a renewed day in the sun.

There is no exhibition catalogue, only a modest brochure that barely scratches

the surface of the interesting material Murray has developed about Abbott

Handerson Thayer. He is, however, working on a book that will fill the void in

American art scholarship about this interesting painter.

The National Museum of American Art is at Eighth and G Streets NW in

Washington; telephone 202/357-2700.