Winged Figure
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
130.8 × 95.9 cm (51 1/2 × 37 3/4 in.)
Classification
painting
Department
Arts of the Americas
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
59798
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
This female angel is one of many that Abbott Handerson Thayer painted during his career. Originally a painter of animals, Thayer created portraits and then allegorical figures like this example after training in Paris. The artist wrote of his seraphic subjects, “I have put on wings probably more to symbolize an exalted atmosphere . . . where one need not explain the action of his figures.” Other late 19th-century artists such as Augustus Saint-Gaudens also represented angelic female figures to p...