Abbott Handerson Thayer Prints Paintings Posters

Winged Figure

Angel Art Poster

Virgin Art Print

Winged Figure Seated Upon a Rock

The Favorite Kitten

Woman in White

Thayer was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He was the son of a rural area doctor, his early life was lived in the countryside New Hampshire, close to the town of Keene which is located at the base of Mount Monadnock. In this country place, he turned a recreational naturalist, or as he said in his words, he was "bird crazy", a huntsman and a trapper. Thayer likewise tried out taxidermy and soon acquired a life time pursuit in art, creating watercolor paintings of nature and the animals around him.

By the age eighteen, Thayer relocated to Brooklyn, New York to have the opportunity learn painting in the Brooklyn Art School and also the National Academy of Design. During 1875, after he married Kate Bloede, he took a trip to Paris in order to study for the next 4 years in the École des Beaux-Arts. Here Thayer studied under Henri Lehmann and academic painter Jean-Léon Gérome. It was also in Paris that he met his future dearest friend, American painter George de Forest Brush. Coming back to New York, Thayer arranged for personal portrait studio which would be one that he shared with fellow artisth Daniel Chester French. Thayer then joined in the Society of American Painters and started to teach art students.

Life turned just about intolerable for Thayer as well as his wife in the beginning of 1880s as two of their little children passed away unexpectedly. The two children died barely one year apart from each other. Emotionally desolate, the couple eventually departed New York. In 1898 where Thayer called on St Ives, Cornwall. He had brought with him to New Your an introductory letter by C. Hart Merrian, the Chief of the US Biological Survey in Washington, D.C., which he gave to the caretaker of St Ives and Treloyhan, Henry Arthur Mornington Wellesley, for license to access avian specimens out of the cliffs at St Ives. In 1901, he and his wife located for a final time in Dublin, New Hampshire, where they would remain. It was an area that they had frequently holidayed and Thayer had spent his childhood. Soon after the move, once her father passed away, Thayer's wife sank into an permanent depression that contributed to her being placed in an asylum, the decay of her health and ultimate death.

Soon after the loss of his first wife Thayer married an old friend, Emma Beach, whose father was the owner of The New York Sun. He and his second wife lived their last years in the countryside New Hampshire, living with the 3 remaining Thayer children, Mary, Gerald and Gladys. During these last years of his lifespan, amidst Thayer's Dublin fellow residents had been George de Forest Brush. At the age 72, Thayer had already been disabled by a series of strokes and passed away quietly at his home on May 29, 1921.

Museums: Abbott Handerson Thayer may be found at The Hood Museum of Art Dartmouth College, NH' the National Museum of American Art, Washington D.C., the Smithsonian American Art Museum is presenting a special on line Abbott Handerson Thayer exhibit.

Alma Wollerman later Mrs. Gerald Thayer 1903
Angel of the Dawn 1919
At the Well
Barns
Blue Ribbon
Boy and Angel
Boy and Angel 1918, 1919, 1920
Caritas 1894-95
David 1895
Dogs at Play Dogs at Rest 1875
Double Portrait of a Girl
Drawing water
Filling her Jug
Florence 1894
Flower study
Forest Interior c.1900
Girl Arranging Her Hair 1918-19
Girl in White (Margaret Greene) 1888
Girl reading 1898
Half-Draped Figure 1885
Landscape at Fontainebleau 1876
Margaret MacKittrick
Meditation 1903
Minerva in a Chariot 1894
Monadnock Angel 1920-1921
Monadnock in Winter
Mrs. William F. Milton 1881
My Children (Mary, Gerald, and Gladys Thayer) 1893-1897
Pastoral Landscape
Pensive Model
Portrait of a Boy
Portrait of a Girl
Portrait of a young Girl
Portrait of Alice Rich 1917
Portrait of Bessie Price 1897
Portrait of Elizabeth Richardson French with her Horse
Portrait of Raphael Welles Pumpelly
Portrait of young Woman 1899
Sleep 1877
Stevenson Memorial 1903
Study of a Horse
The Angel 1903
The Philosopher
The Red Fox 1870
The Three Graces
Virgin Enthroned 1891
Waist length Portrait of a Woman
Winged Figure 1889
Winter Landscape 1902
Woman in a Grecian Gown 1894
Woman in Green Velvet 1918