Abbott Handerson Thayer (American, 1849–1921)
Winged Figure
INV-5979
Abbott Handerson Thayer (American, 1849–1921)1889
Winged Figure
Abbott Handerson Thayer (American, 1849–1921) →paintingamerican arts
Date
1889
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
130.8 × 95.9 cm (51 1/2 × 37 3/4 in.)
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Location
Chicago, IL
Credit
Simeon B. Williams Fund
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.