Abbott Handerson Thayer, Artist in Search of the Ideal

[@hgallagher1091]

So good to have heard this.

[@TheMarkEH]

It is wonderful to be introduced to such fabulous artworks and the biographies of their creators. Thank you for creating and sharing such an enlightening and entertaining video.

[@geraldskinner63]

Brilliant!

[@sparkspark2314]

Again…another great presentation of an artist I knew nothing about. It’s stunning. It’s like I know nothing about art at all…all these people of great talent and mind who except for your fantastic videos…I would likely go the rest of my life in the dark about them all. You’re doing an amazing thing for the people of this world…both past and present. Bravo 👏 👏 👏 👏 👏 👏❤❤❤❤

[@jultolentino7515]

Perfectly Right,many thanks for sharing this great talent of the past.GOD BLESS

[@bonitaroberts1217]

Thank you for these wonderful and inspiring presentations!

[@sylvain_st_pierre_2019]

Definitely enjoyed, once again. Thank you.

[@philipu150]

Thank you for introducing me to Thayer. It is interesting to me to confirm that he was a descendant of Sylvaus Thayer and that line. Although my thoughts are necessarily preliminary, I believe that you have well presented the issue of the "unfinished" aspects of his painting. This is something too often distorted to mean something absurd, such as that a certain Hals portrait prefigured Monet or some abstract Modernist, or, in the other direction, that Leonardo had problems with attention span. In my view, the emergence of the Impressionist movement marks the region in which we begin to lose the ability to distinguish unfinished from mere desire for effect. Whatever may have been Thayer's view of such matters, his focus on what most essentially mattered in a given work certainly comes through; hence I am more reminded of a master such as Leonardo, relentlessly striving to comprehend paradoxes of matters profound. For such an artist, the tertiary details remain thus; what is extraordinary is his or her level of mastery as to so frequently complete a painting, without giving equal treatment to the tertiary while maintaining its unity. Velazquez's Juan de Pareja and many Rembrandts come prominently to mind.

[@geraldskinner63]

Zorn's Impressions de Londres is one of my favorites. It captures a moment in time perfectly.

[@michaeljohnangel6359]

Another great video! Thanks!!! Nelson White-Annigoni's first American student-owns many of Theyer's paintings. Nelson's father wrote the first biography of Theyer. Are the frames (not the alterpiece-like frames) by Stanford White?

[@gammelllackinstitute]

Not sure about the period frames. Thanks.

[@johngraham4053]

Interesting presentation, I think his rough paintings were kind of epitomes, focusing on the essence of his subject. It’s rather like the way observe anything we do view everything in sharp focus. In other words we do not take in the whole view we home in on attractive point, all else is out of focus.

[@wemblyfez]

Well said. He seems to focus in on what he thinks is important and, once he has that down, leaves the rest to our, the viewers, imagination, letting US fill in the blanks, as it were. I'm curious, though, how staged these portraits were (or if they were). In other words, did he pick out a model to say something that HE wanted to say and, rather than paint a close likeness of the subject, let his thoughts and ideas of what he wanted to say in a painting take the forefront using a live model as just a jumping off point? I'm sure these portraits were excellent likenesses but did he, for example, purposefully, extend a mouth line or exaggerate the length of a nose to make his statement? Powerful paintings, all the same.

[@johngraham4053]

@@wemblyfez oh yes I am sure, Artist Licence, and its what makes the artist.

[@alex24mamba]

I live near Chicago. His painting called " winged figure" is definitely top 5 greatest paintings I've ever seen. The textures come out nearly 1/2 an inch.