Art Institute of Chicago

Winged Figure

Abbott Handerson Thayer (American, 1849–1921)LinkedCulture matchlcp-c7cda423b65e

Date: 1889
Medium: Oil on canvas
Culture: United States
Department: Arts of the Americas
Institution: Art Institute of Chicago
Object ID: 59798

From the Art Institute of Chicago record

This female angel is one of many that Abbott Handerson Thayer painted during his career. Originally a painter of animals, Thayer created portraits and then allegorical figures like this example after training in Paris. The artist wrote of his seraphic subjects, “I have put on wings probably more to symbolize an exalted atmosphere . . . where one need not explain the action of his figures.” Other late 19th-century artists such as Augustus Saint-Gaudens also represented angelic female figures to personify what they perceived as the virtues of women. In Winged Figure , Thayer mixed this idealism with a level of naturalism, particularizing the woman’s features and giving her form a sense of mass and gravity.

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Provenance & credit

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Credit line: Simeon B. Williams Fund
Provenance: Hillyer Art Gallery, Smith College, Northampton, MA, 1889; Gimbel Brothers, New York, 1946; Julius H. Weitzner, New York, 1947; sold by him to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1947.