page_title: Ellen Day Hale
section_title: Education
hierarchical_section_title: Ellen Day Hale / Biography / Education
caption_attribution_description: Morning News. Private collection. Painting - oil on canvas. Height: 127 cm (50 in.), Width: 91.44 cm (36 in.).
context_page_description: Ellen Day Hale was an American Impressionist painter and printmaker from Boston. She studied art in Paris and during her adult life lived in Paris, London and Boston. She exhibited at the Paris Salon and the Royal Academy of Arts. Hale wrote the book History of Art: A Study of the Lives of Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian, and Albrecht Dürer and mentored the next generation of New England female artists, paving the way for widespread acceptance of female artists.
context_section_description: In 1873, Hale began her formal art education and training in Boston with painter William Rimmer. Although the changing cultural and social landscape of Boston provided many new opportunities for women, female students were still segregated from their male counterparts. Therefore, Hale took private lessons from Rimmer, and his instruction focused primarily on drawing and the analysis of anatomy. A year later, Hale enrolled in William Morris Hunt's school for painting with approximately forty other women artists. With Hunt, artist Helen M. Knowlton acted as one of the school's main instructors. Hunt and Knowlton encouraged a new style and used unique teaching methods, such as interpretive sketching, which had an important artistic influence on Hale. Knowlton especially promoted a sense of community within the class of female artists, and the group of women relied upon each other, rather than their husbands or other men, for professional and personal support.
  Seeking additional training, Hale traveled to Philadelphia in 1878 to attend the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA). Hale studied at PAFA for two years, where she first painted from the live female nude. Hale attended the Academy while it was directed by Thomas Eakins, who, like William Rimmer, emphasized the study of human anatomy as the basis for figure painting. After studying in Philadelphia, Hale traveled throughout Europe with Knowlton in 1881. The pair visited Belgium, Holland, Italy, England and France, visiting museums and copying paintings, before Hale moved to Paris to begin training with Parisian masters. Hale was one of over one thousand young American artists studying in and around Paris at this time. She quickly enrolled in formal programs, first studying drawing with Emmanuel Frémiet at the Jardin des Plantes, and then going on to train at Académie Colarossi. Hunt and Knowlton's "rather loosely structured school had not prepared Hale for the rigorous teaching style of the Académie Colarossi, where she found the 'general work of the class...neither interesting nor inspiring."
  In September 1882, Hale traveled to London to study briefly at the Royal Academy of Arts. On returning to Paris, she began training at the Académie Julian, where she studied for three years. Her instructors included Rudolphe Julian, Tony Robert-Fleury, Jules Joseph Lefebvre, Gustave-Rudolphe Boulanger and William-Adolphe Bouguereau. Because young women were not admitted to the most prestigious Parisian institutes like the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, they were left with no choice but to enroll in independent academies that charged tuition. Académie Julian followed the practice of most private schools and required women to pay more money than men for lessons. Despite these hardships, Hale preferred Académie Julian to any of the other schools she attended, as she developed a close-knit group of friends who acted as a support system for her.
caption: Morning News, 1905, oil on canvas (50" x 36")
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