Oral history interview with Polly Thayer
odd: label: General
content: Originally recorded on 3 sound cassettes. Reformatted in 2010 as 6 digital wav files. Duration is 3 hr., 44 min.
name: label: Interviewee
content: Thayer, Polly, 1904-2006
label: Interviewer
content: Brown, Robert F.
label: Names
content: Cox, Gardner, 1906-1988
label: Names
content: Hale, Philip Leslie, 1865-1931
label: Names
content: Hawthorne, Charles Webster, 1872-1930
label: Names
content: Hofmann, Hans, 1880-1966
label: Names
content: Hopkinson, Charles, 1869-1962
label: Names
content: Littlefield, William Horace, 1902-1969
label: Names
content: Saltonstall, Nathaniel, 1903-1968
label: Names
content: Sarton, May, 1912-
label: Names
content: Van Ness, Beatrice Whitney, 1888-1981
label: Names
content: Wickey, Harry
topic: label: Occupation
content: Painters -- Massachusetts -- Boston
label: Topic
content: Women artists
label: Topic
content: Women painters
acqinfo: label: Provenance
content: This interview is part of the Archives of American Art Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics and administrators.
creator: label: Interviewee
content: Thayer, Polly, 1904-2006
label: Interviewer
content: Brown, Robert F.
bioghist: label: Biographical / Historical
content: Polly E. Thayer (1904-2006) was a painter from Boston, Massachusetts.
physdesc: label: Extent
content: 89 Pages (Transcript)
unitdate: label: Date
content: 1995 May 12-1996 February 1
dataSource: label: Archival Repository
content: Archives of American Art
identifier: label: Identifier
content: AAA.thayer95
objectType: label: Type
content: Collection descriptions
label: Type
content: Archival materials
label: Type
content: Pages
label: Type
content: Sound recordings
label: Type
content: Interviews
altformavail: label: Existence and Location of Copies
content: Transcript available online.
genre_format: label: Genre/Form
content: Sound recordings
label: Genre/Form
content: Interviews
scopecontent: label: Scope and Contents
content: An interview of Polly Thayer (Starr) conducted 1995 May 12-1996 February 1, by Robert F. Brown, for the Archives of American Art.
label: Scope and Contents
content: Thayer talks about her childhood in an upper class Boston family, thriving on drawing in charcoal from casts at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, under tutelage of Beatrice Van Ness; her social debut, 1921-1922; a trip in the summer of 1922 to the Orient with her mother and brother where she was caught in the Tokyo earthquake; Philip Hale's method of teaching drawing at the Museum School in Boston, 1923-1924, and, later, privately; Eugene Speicher's urging her to free herself from Hale's teaching; the difficulty of making the transition to painting; and winning of the Hallgarten Prize of National Academy of Design, 1929.
label: Scope and Contents
content: Studying with Charles W. Hawthorne in Provincetown, Massachusetts in the summer of 1923-1924, which countered the rigidity of her training at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston School; travels in Spain and Morocco in early 1929, at the time her large painting of a nude, "Circles," won the Hallgarten Prize; the importance to her of a letter in 1929 from the critic, Royal Cortissoz, urging her to not fall into the trap of the Boston School and become formulaic in her work; her first one-person show at Doll and Richards, Boston, which resulted in 18 portrait commissions; her ease with which she did self-portraits early in her career, but not so later; and her difficulty in holding the attention of portrait sitters.
label: Scope and Contents
content: Studying with Harry Wickey at the Art Students League, who taught her by boldly re-working her drawings for "plastic" values, which Starr quickly achieved; sketching medical operations and back-stage at theatres, which gave her the dramatic subject matter she sought in the early 1930s; her portraits; getting married in 1933 and the affect on her work; and her work at the Painter's Workshop in Boston with Gardner Cox and William Littlefield. She recalls May Sarton whose portrait she painted in 1936, Charles Hopkinson, and Hans Hofmann.
label: Scope and Contents
content: The distractions from painting brought about by marriage, children, acting, an active social life and much travel; her increased involvement in social concerns through her conversion to Quakerism; the simplification of her paintings beginning in the late 1930s and her steady execution of portrait commissions, which took less time; her exhibitions in Boston and New York through the 1940s and the rarity of them after that; being a board member of the Institute of Modern Art, Boston, and its co-founder, Nathaniel Saltonstall; her approach to painting which amounts to seeking the invisible in the visual world; and the onset of glaucoma which has ended her painting career.