The Visit (The Fenway Studio)

Details

PHILIP LESLIE HALE (1865-1931)
The Visit (The Fenway Studio)
oil on canvas
25 x 20 in. (63.5 x 50.8 cm.)
Painted circa 1915.

Provenance

The artist.
Estate of the above.
Franklin P. Folts, Boston, Massachusetts.
Private collection, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Vose Galleries, LLC, Boston, Massachusetts, 1976.
Private collection, California, acquired from the above, 1976.
Vose Galleries, LLC, Boston, Massachusetts.
Acquired by the present owner from the above, 1998.

Literature

W.H. Downes, "Pictures by Philip L. Hale," Boston Evening Transcript, February 18, 1919, pt. 2, p. 15 (as In a Balcony).
C. Temin, "Painted Legacy: Artists and Vose Galleries join forces to save Fenway Studios, a historic temple to art," Boston Globe, May 28, 1998, p. F4, illustrated (as In the Fenway Studio).
R. Safran, "Vose Galleries Celebrates Artists of Fenway Studios," Maine Antique Digest, Augst 1998, pp. 36E, 37E, illustrated (as The Fenway Studio).

Exhibited

Boston, Massachusetts, Guild of Boston Artists, February 1919 (as In a Balcony).
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 117th Annual Exhibition, February 5-March 26, 1922 (as The Visit).
Boston, Massachusetts, Vose Galleries, LLC, Paintings and Drawings by Philip Leslie Hale (1865-1931) from the Folts Collection, November 1-December 2, 1966, no. 26.
New York, Hirscl & Adler Galleries, Inc., The American Impressionists, November 12-30, 1968, n.p., no. 28, illustrated.
Boston, Massachusetts, Vose Galleries, LLC, Mary Bradish Titcomb and Her Contemporaries: The Artists of Fenway Studios, 1905-1939, May 30-July 31, 1998, p. 22, no. 33, illustrated.

Conditions of sale

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Lot Essay

The present work depicts Philip Leslie Hale's Boston studio, which adjoined that of his wife and fellow artist Lilian Westcott Hale within the Fenway Studios building. Still in operation today, the historic structure of 46 studios opened in 1905 and housed the workspaces of several other important Boston School artists, including Joseph DeCamp, William MacGregor Paxton, Lilla Cabot Perry and Edmund Tarbell. As Christine Temin of the Boston Globe describes, The Visit (The Fenway Studio) celebrates "the building where Hale painted it, a building dear to Boston's artists since its opening in 1905." (Boston Globe, May 28, 1998, p. F4)

The present work has been praised since its exhibition at the Guild of Boston Artists in February 1919, when the Boston Evening Transcript reviewer W.H. Downes described: "The composition is novel and well invented. The poses of the two girls' figures, full of animation and gaiety, are plastic and free and graceful, without any hint of deliberate arrangement. There is an unusually attractive and natural movement of lines in the design..." ("Pictures by Philip L. Hale," Boston Evening Transcript, February 18, 1919, pt. 2, p. 15)

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