Hi Subscriber,
It's so easy to dismiss work in the present as unimportant or unworthy.
Yet, we never know what future generations may think of the things we
say and do.
Maybe your failure hasn't failed - it's just waiting for the right set
of eyes to appreciate it.
Enjoy today's selection,
BoldBrush Studio Team
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Abbott Handerson Thayer, Half Draped Figure, oil on canvas, c. 1885
Abbott Handerson Thayer, Half Draped Figure, oil on canvas, c. 1885
The Failed Painting
of
Abbott Handerson Thayer
Even "the best of them," as John Singer Sargent called Abbot Handerson
Thayer, had his failures, the painting that nobody wanted. Thayer, a
painter and muralist admired today for his mastery of painting the
human figure, experienced this even in the vibrant art market at the
turn of the 19th century. It was 1885 when he painted it; Thayer was
35, living in New York with a young family and teaching and painting.
Titled Half Draped Figure, it was a loosely worked study, confident and
striking.
He was friends at the time with fellow artist George de Forest Brush;
they were to be lifelong friends and eventually became neighbors in the
countryside of Dublin, New Hampshire. Brush's daughter relates the fate
of this painting over thirty years later, when both men were residing
in Dublin and Thayer had apparently forgotten about the painting:
"In the summer of 1919, Abbott Thayer was unable to conduct his regular
summer art classes in Dublin because of ill health and nervous
exhaustion, and his two young assistants gave the lessons under my
father's supervision. In his biography of Thayer, Nelson C. White
writes: Wishing for a study of Thayer's to inspire the pupils, they got
his permission to search for one in his barn. They discovered a roll of
canvas untouched for twenty or thirty years, covered with dust and
cobwebs. Unrolling it, they were astounded to discover the magnificent
Figure Half Draped….At first sight Thayer denied that he had painted
it, having forgotten it entirely. They tacked it on the wall, and when
Brush came in told him of Thayer's repudiation of it. 'Why of course he
painted it,' said Brush. 'I carried it around New York rolled up under
my arm all one winter in the eighties to raise money for him, but
couldn't.'
The forgotten picture, one of Abbott Thayer's finest, was sold not long
after his death for forty thousand dollars!"
The moral of the story: don't throw away your successful studies. Just
because a painting doesn't sell now, doesn't mean it won't ever.
Thayer's painting is now in the collection of the Smithsonian Art
Museum .
(Quoted from George de Forest Brush; recollections of a joyous painter
by Nancy Douglas Bowditch)
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