Abbott Handerson Thayer Self-Portrait

Completed a year before his death, Abbott Handerson Thayer’s darkly dramatic self-portrait is one of several that he created at the end of his life. According to scholar Kevin Murphy, Thayer’s need to protect—from guarding his own children to caring for the environment in his home state of New Hampshire—was a guiding force for the artist. Thayer is best known for his landscapes and paint- ings of ideal women and winged angels, but he spent many years studying natural science and theo- ries of evolution. He developed ideas about camou- flage and visual protection in the natural world and co-authored a book with his son Gerald entitled Concealing-Coloration in the Animal Kingdom (1909). These ideas informed his approach to painting as well, for as in this portrait, he often used the paint- erly surface of his work, with its dark coloration and sense of insubstantiality, to hide elements of the figure.