Winged Figure

Abbott Handerson Thayer’s painting Winged Figure (1889) is an iconic work that depicts his unique style and subject matter. Some key points about this painting:
• It shows a winged female figure in a landscape, reflecting Thayer’s interest in painting idealized subjects, especially angels and femmes fatales. The winged figure is a recurring motif in his paintings.
• The figure appears to glow with an inner light and merges subtly into the surrounding landscape. This reflects Thayer’s mastery of diaphanous tones and diffusion of light and color. His paintings have a dreamy, ethereal quality.
• The overall harmonious color scheme, ranging from the peachy flesh tones of the figure to the lavenders and pale greens of the landscape, showcase Thayer’s tonalist style. Tonalism aimed to create mood through subtle variations of tone and color.
• The composition is deliberately flattened, with little sense of depth. The figure floats in space. This demonstrates Thayer’s move away from Academic Classicism towards a more modern, decorative aesthetic.
• The painting is symbolic as well as decorative. The winged figure represents an angel, a celestial ideal of beauty and purity. She symbolizes spiritual themes that fascinated Thayer and other artists of the era.
• Works like Winged Figure established Thayer as a leading American artist of the late 19th century. Along with luminists like John Frederick Kensett, Thayer’s paintings captured a poetic, otherworldly version of nature that appealed to patrons of the era.
• Winged Figure is currently held by the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. It is considered an iconic example of Thayer’s maturing style and thought.