Object Image

The handsome Clara Adelaide May (1872-1946) posed for this canvas that Thayer simply called "Head." With that title, he sought to endow his female figure with a monumentality that one contemporary called "the heroic dignity of the Roman matron of legend." Despite Thayer's allusion to classical sources, viewers at the time saw this canvas as a portrait that revealed the young woman's dignified personality. In fact, she was a neighbor girl whom the artist saw often at the summer art colony in Dublin, New Hampshire.

(Quotation from Royal Cortissoz, "Personal Memories," The Arts, [a memorial issue on the artist's death], (June-July 1921))

Credit: Gift of Charles Lang Freer...

1888-1889
Oil on canvas
76.3 x 51.0cm
Images and text © Freer|Sackler Galleries, 2017

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