Boston School of Impressionists

Philip Leslie Hale was a leading member of the Boston School of Impressionists, along with Edmund Tarbell, Frank Weston Benson, William McGregor Paxton and Joseph De Camp, among others. Following studies at the Art Students League in New York, Hale traveled abroad to Paris in 1887 to study at the Académie Julian. Christie’s

This Man Is Special!

Philip Leslie Hale is also the husband of one of my favorites  🙂 — Lillian Westcott Hale. He wrote to Lilian Westcott (his future wife) while courting her:

“I want what is best for you.  If you feel you want a year or two of foreign study–well–it’s all right…It all rests with you dearest.  Only don’t worry about it.  Whichever way you decide is all right.  What you desire is right.  Why try to decide at all just now?  Just let things slide till it’s borne in on you just what you want to do.  My great and chiefest feeling is that I don’t want you, in the years to come, to look back, and in your heart of hearts regret…I want you to feel that you’ve had a first rate show and haven’t been interfered with–not to feel that ‘it might have been.’”Hale Family in American Art

“Experimenter” Inspired By Monet’s Garden

The following summer, he visited Giverny for the first time, finding inspiration in Claude Monet’s gardens and the community of American Impressionists living there. Upon his return from France, his art student at the Museum School in Boston described Hale as “an experimenter…He had worked out a great many things about vibrations of color, pointillism…of getting the most colorful effect with the limitations of paint.” (as quoted in Philip Leslie Hale, A.N.A. (1865-1931): Paintings and Drawings, exhibition catalogue, Boston, Massachusetts, 1988 p. 5) Christie’s

Bold Colors and Brush Work

While he later concentrated on more subtle effects of light in his interiors and portraits, Hale maintained this emphasis on bold colors and Impressionist brushwork for his outdoor subjects for the rest of his career, as exemplified by The Rose Tree Girl.  Christie’s

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Gallery best viewed At Sunnyside

 

Details

Philip Leslie Hale (1865-1931)
The Rose Tree Girl
oil on canvas
40 ¼ x 20 1/8 in. (102.2 x 51.1 cm.)
Painted circa 1922.

Source: Christie’s

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~Sunnyside