Angel

Date: 1887
 * [[image:http://ids.si.edu/ids/deliveryService?id=http://americanart.si.edu/images/1929/1929.6.112_1a.jpg&max=460 width="275" height="353" link="@http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=23922"]] || Title: **Angel**

Artist: **Abbott Handerson Thayer** Born: Boston, Massachusetts 1849 Died: Monadnock, New Hampshire 1921

Medium: oil on canvas Dimensions: 36 1/4 x 28 1/8 in. (92.0 x 71.5 cm.) Smithsonian American Art Museum Gift of John Gellatly

Accession: 1929.6.112 || Critics considered Thayer's //Angel// an image of “spotless innocence and aspiration” in an age of materialism. They did not know that the figure was Thayer's personal allegory of hope and spirituality, created after two of his children had died and he had lost his wife to mental illness. While painting it, Thayer wrote, “Yesterday I found the head so on the right track at last that I had an inspired moment partly aided by that strange summoning of clear sight, and when I looked at it I saw at a glance my best thing. I am blissful.” Angel is set like a jewel in a gilded wood frame designed by architect Stanford White.
 * Exhibition Label: **

Thayer, Roosevelt, and Camouflage Thayer in On Camouflage Thayer Writes for Scientific Monthly 
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px;">Artist Biography <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px;">Smithsonian American Art Museum: Abbott Handerson Thayer SAAM Collections Page
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