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. TitledHalf 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 Drapedâ¦.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 theSmithsonian Art Museum.
(Quoted fromGeorge de Forest Brush; recollections of a joyous painterby Nancy Douglas Bowditch)
