Studio: international art (15.1899)

An American Painter

are masterly studies, and the individual character- whose poetic work was reviewed in a former
istics of the various toilers on the way to their number of the Studio, and the Portrait of a
work through the chill mists of the morning, are Lady standing by her Horse, in which was noticed
revealed, as it were, unconsciously. a considerable change in style, the handling having

It was not until he had worked for some little gained in delicacy without any loss of strength,
time in Paris that Abbott Thayer began to make It was in 1886 that were exhibited the two
portrait-painting his speciality. In 1880 was ex- works, more widely known perhaps, than any others
hibited, in New York, a Portrait of a Young Girl outside the artist's native country: the Mother
with a bunch of daisies at her breast. Painted and Child and the Angel, the former portraits
with a simplicity equal to that of Sleep, it has yet of Abbott Thayer's second child and his mother,
that distinct individuality which proves it to be as the latter an idealised likeness of his eldest
faithful a likeness as it is an ideal embodiment of daughter who, as an infant, had unconsciously
maidenhood, bringing out all that was best and posed for Sleep.

highest in the character of its subject. It was In the Mother and. Child, perhaps the most
followed in pretty rapid succession by various pathetic and at the same time the most ideal of
other portraits, including one of the artist's friend all the artist's pictures, the mother's face is full of
and fellow-student in Paris, Thomas Millie Dow, an infinite compassion, with an intuition into suffer-
ing which raises her above

____ a mere typical human

mother caressing her child,
while the lovely boy looks

v'a* &M ■out of the picture with

an expression of innocence
which goes straight to the
heart.

HV 0 i The Angel was exhibited

first in New York and later
at the Exposition Universelle
of 1889 in Paris, where it
j was awarded the bronze
I medal. Exquisite in model-
ling, it is pure and delicate
in colour, the face full of
indefinable charm, the eyes
lit up with the radiance of
another and a better world.
The wings, almost meeting
■PP*' over the head, are of a

lustrous white, faintly flecked
here and there with an iri-

fM-\ ' .4aMfcJf' ; W'.s / descent gleam. Soft and

kjfl i j light though they are, how-

ever, they yet convey the
idea of sufficient strength to
bear the pure visitant back
to her heavenly home, and
the white arms balancing
the wings are stretched out
with a gesture expressive of
an absolutely frank and
childlike character, innocent
of all knowledge of evil.

"MOTHER AND CHILD " FROM A PAINTING BY ABBOTT H. THAYER In 1889 Were also exhi-

(By permission of Messrs. Curtis and Cameron, New York) bited the Portrait of a Young

25°