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A Bride
Abbott Handerson Thayer (born Boston, MA 1849-died Dublin, NH 1921)
ca. 1895
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Classification
- Paintings
- Dimensions
- 21 x 17 1/8 in. (53.3 x 43.4 cm.)
- Museum
- Smithsonian Institution, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of John Gellatly
- Rights
- CC0 (Smithsonian Open Access), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Smithsonian Institution
About this work
Abbott Thayer painted this study for a large society portrait of Alice Maude Allen Atwater of Pittsfield, Massachusetts. He sketched her from life and focused on the details of her face and her general pose. But in the finished version, which he made in his studio, he lavished attention on the bride's gown of Japanese gold cloth with a Belgian rose-point lace bodice. Years later the dress remained in his mind, but when asked who the bride was, he had trouble remembering. (Prelinger, American Impressionism: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2000)
