page_title: Stevenson Memorial
section_title: Related works and working methods
hierarchical_section_title: Stevenson Memorial / Related works and working methods
context_page_description: Stevenson Memorial is a 1903 oil painting by the American artist Abbott Handerson Thayer, intended to commemorate the writer Robert Louis Stevenson. Though Thayer initiated several paintings with the intent of honoring Stevenson, Stevenson Memorial is the only version to survive the artist's revisions.
context_section_description: It was Thayer's intent that an earlier painting, My Children (Mary, Gerald and Gladys Thayer), completed in 1897, would serve as memorial to the author. In that work his daughter Mary had initially been painted holding a plaque with Stevenson's monogram, but Thayer transformed the plaque into a laurel wreath and dedicated the work to his children after being told that the painting's connection to Stevenson was not clear.  The winged figure of Stevenson Memorial was painted over an earlier work, also a portrait of his three children; it, too, was envisioned as a tribute to Stevenson.
  Thayer's working methods were unconventional. According to Rockwell Kent, who at that time worked as an apprentice and copyist in Thayer's studio, Thayer was displeased with the appearance of the rock upon which the figure was seated, and asked for the younger artist's opinion:
  With not too much conviction I offered my criticism. "Good!" said Thayer. "Now I'll go out. You take my brushes and paint the rock the way you think it ought to be. And call me when you've finished."....So I went to work. And when I had done the best I could, I called Thayer back. Thayer was generous. "Yes," he cried, "I think you've helped it." Suddenly he cried, "Look! We're both wrong--building it up little by little like that! God said, 'let there be a rock'--and there it was." And picking up a broom he swept it right and left across the painting. It did the trick.
  A later painting, Winged Figure Seated upon a Rock (Freer Gallery of Art), was another canvas begun as an alternative conception of the Stevenson Memorial, but was not completed until years later. In 1914 Thayer transformed it into a memorial for his late wife, with his daughter Gladys posing for the figure and a Latin inscription translated as "Mother of my daughter! To you this monument" painted below.
  The model for Stevenson Memorial was Bessie Price, a guest of the Thayer household that caught the attention of Mr.Thayer. She had just traveled from Ireland to visit her siblings who worked in the household and decided to stay in America to be Thayer's servant. She had previously posed for other paintings by the artist, including Portrait of Bessie Price, Young Woman (Metropolitan Museum of Art), and Seated Angel (Wadsworth Atheneum).
caption: Abbott Thayer.  Young Woman (Bessie Price), circa 1897–1898. Oil on canvas, 25​1⁄2 × 19​5⁄8 inches. Hunter Museum of American Art. Another figure for which Bessie Price posed, closely related to Young Woman in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
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