Biografie von Philip Leslie HALE (1865-1931)

Birth place: Boston, MA

Addresses: Paris, France; Boston, Roxbury, Dedham, MA

Profession: Painter, teacher, writer

Studied: early training under his sister, Ellen Day Hale; BMFA Sch. with Tarbell, 1883; privately with Wm. M. Chase, 1883; ASL with J.A. Weir, K. Cox, 1884; Acad. Julian, Paris with Lefebvre, Boulanger, Benjamin-Constant, and Doucet1887-89; …cole des Beaux-Arts, Paris.

Exhibited: Boston AC, 1888-96; Paris Salon, 1888, 1889; SNBA, 1890, 1893, 1897; PAFA, 1890, 1893-99, 1901-31 (Lea prize, 1916; Popular prize, 1919); NAD, 1894-95, 1916 (Proctor prize); Gal. Durand-Ruel, NYC, 1899 (1st solo); Pan.-Am. Expo, Buffalo, 1901; St. Louis Expo, 1904 (bronze med.); Corcoran Gal., 1907-30 (12 times); Buenos Aires Expo, 1910 (gold med.); Armory Show, 1913; AIC, 1914 (silver med.); Pan.-Pac. Expo, San Fran., 1915 (prize); Phila. WCC, 1916 (prize); Folsom Gal., NYC, 1918.

Member: ANA, 1917; Phila. AC, 1917-on; St. Botolph Club; Boston Art Club, 1894-on; Copley Soc.; Boston GA (founding mem.); San Fran. Soc. Artists, 1915-on; PAFA (fellow); Eclectics; Port. Painters; Int. Art Jury, San Fran. Expo., 1915; NAC, 1917; Nat. Assn. Portrait Painters

Work: BMFA; Cooper-Hewitt Mus.; Delaware AM; Univ. Virginia AM; PAFA; Mus. Montevideo, Uruguay; CGA; Phila. AC.

Comments: One of the leaders of the Boston School" of artists, he was an influential teacher of both painting and art history. He was a life-long advocate of Vermeer's style and vision, and wrote a book about the artist in 1913. He was the son of Rev. Edward Everett Hale, brother of Ellen Day Hale, and husband of Lilian Westcott Hale. He began summering at Giverny in 1888, with T.E. Butler. In 1892, his column "Letter from Paris" began appearing in Arcadia Magazine. He served as art critic for the Boston Herald, 1905-09; and the Boston Evening Transcript. He was a defender of the aesthetic position of the Tarbellites and the Boston tradition. He taught at the BMFA School for three decades as well as at the PAFA, and at Boston Univ., 1926-28.

Sources: WW29; Nancy Hale (daughter of Lilian and Philip Hale), The Life in the Studio (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1957); Vose Galleries, Boston, exh. cat., 1988; Vose Galleries, Mary Bradish Titcomb and Her Contemporaries, 22, 34; Fink, American Art at the Nineteenth-Century Paris Salons, 350; Brown, The Story of the Armory Show; Falk, Exh. Record Series.