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= Ellen Day Hale =

Early Life
Ellen Day Hale was born on February 11, 1855 in Worcester, Massachusetts, into an elite Boston Brahmin family. Hale's father was author and orator Edward Everett Hale and her mother was Emily Baldwin Perkins. Although the Hale family was well respected among the Boston upper class, they were not exceptionally wealthy. Her father acted as a Unitarian chaplain in the U.S. Senate from 1904 until his death in 1909, and Hale often assisted her father in his church-related duties. Hale was one of eight children, and she helped her mother and father take care of her younger siblings.[3] From a young age, Ellen Day Hale was raised within an artistic atmosphere, as her mother encouraged her interest in art, and her aunt, watercolorist Susan Hale, most likely provided her first artistic instruction (1). Her brother was Philip Leslie Hale, a celebrated artist and art critic, and he married Lilian Westcott Hale, an Impressionist painter.[1][2]

Hale’s family background provided her with a network of strong female role models. Her great-aunt was Harriet Beecher Stowe, an abolitionist and author of the anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin. 1] Educator Catherine Beecher and suffragist Isabella Beecher Hooker were also great-aunts.[4] One of Hale’s first cousins was writer and social reformer Charlotte Perkins Gilman, best known for her short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”.[2] In all likelihood, this group of influential women impacted Ellen Day Hale’s sense of self and inspired her own activist efforts later in life.

Education
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 (1). 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. Along with Hunt, artist Helen Mary Knowlton also acted as one of the school’s main instructors. Hunt and Knowlton both encouraged a new style and utilized unique teaching methods, such as interpretive sketching, which had an important artistic influence on Ellen Day 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, Ellen Day Hale traveled to Philadelphia in 1878 to attend the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (PAFA). Hale studied at PAFA for two years, and it was here where she first painted from the live female nude (2). 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 (1). After studying in Philadelphia, Hale traveled throughout Europe with Helen 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. Ellen Day Hale was one of the many young American artists who were drawn to Paris at this time. She quickly enrolled in formal programs, first studying drawing with Emmanuel Fremiet at the Jardin des Plantes, and then going on to train at Academie Colarossi. Hunt and Knowlton’s “rather loosely structured school had not prepared Hale for the rigorous teaching style of the Academie Colarossi, where she found the ‘general work of the class… neither interesting nor inspiring” (2).

In September of 1882, Hale traveled to London to study briefly at the Royal Academy of Arts. On returning to Paris, she began training at the Academie Julian, where she studied for three years. Her instructors included Rudolphe Julian, Tony Robert-Fleury, Jules-Joseph Lefebvre, Gustave-Rudolphe Boulanger and Adolphe William 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. Academie Julian followed the practice of most private schools and required women to pay more money than men for lessons. Despite these hardships, Hale preferred Academie 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.

Personal Life
Ellen Day Hale was considered a "New Woman": a successful, highly trained woman artist from the 19th century who never married. Other New Women include Elizabeth Coffin, Mary Cassatt, Elizabeth Nourse and Cecilia Beaux.[5] Although Hale never married, she found a lifelong partner in fellow artist Gabrielle DeVaux Clements, whom she met in 1883. Hale and Clements became close friends in 1885 while they were both enrolled at the Academie Julian in Paris. While traveling and studying in Europe together, Clements taught Hale how to etch. In 1893, the two artists returned to the United States and moved into a house together. The home was located near Gloucester, Massachusetts, and they named it “The Thickets.” The exact nature of their relationship is uncertain, but during this time, lifelong relationships between women were not uncommon and were often referred to as “Boston Marriages” (1, pg32). Hale and Clements’ relationship, like other “Boston Marriages” of the time, provided the women with personal fulfillment and emotional support as each pursued professional careers as artists.

Hale moved to Santa Barbara, California for two years in the 1890s, perhaps to improve her health after falling ill during her late twenties. In 1904, she moved to Washington D.C., where she acted as her father’s hostess during his time as chaplain for the U.S. Senate (3). As an unmarried woman, Hale did what was expected of her, and devoted herself to the need of her parents. Despite these familial obligations, however, Hale never gave up her passion for art, and she continued to paint and make etchings for the rest of her life.

Self-Portrait
Ellen Day Hale began painting her self-portrait in 1884, working on it at her family’s home in Roxbury, Massachusetts, as well as their summer home in Matunuck, Rhode Island. The painting, entitled Self-Portrait, depicts Hale gazing confidently at the viewer with her right hand dangling slightly over the chair. Hale is dressed in all black, wearing a dress with buttons and a fur collar, covered by a loose jacket. Peeking out of a round black hat are Hale’s bangs, which at the time were praised as a youthful hairstyle but could also connote promiscuity (2). Hale seems to be making a fashion statement with her bangs, choice of costume, and the ostrich-feather fan that she holds. When Hale first showed the painting to her instructors in 1885, artist Bouguereau significantly criticized the size and position of the hand and encouraged Hale to make it “prettier.” However, Hale did not make any of the suggested changes to the hand, refusing to conform her work to the idealized, academic notions of beauty. The compositional weight of her hand is also notable because it was extremely rare for artists, both male and female, to portray themselves looking directly at the viewer without any tools to identify their profession.

When Hale exhibited Self-Portrait in Boston, perhaps for the first time, in 1887, a critic, meaning to compliment her work, described it as displaying "a man’s strength in the treatment and handling of her subjects." The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston later commented, "Hale's forthright presentation, her strong dark colors, and the direct manner in which she engages the viewer recall the work of one of the French painters she most admired, Edouard Manet. Manet had been known for his confrontational images, strongly painted without subtle nuances of light and shadow."[2] Hale was one of a handful of women of the time, including Elizabeth Nourse, and Elizabeth Coffin, who "created compelling self-portraits in which they fearlessly presented themselves as individuals willing to flout social codes and challenge accepted ideas regarding women's place in society. Indeed, the New Women portraits of the 1880s and 1890s are unforgettable interpretations of energetic, self-confident and accomplished women."[10] Hale created and displayed, in her own words, an “original and queer” representation of herself, and this daring assertion of identity marks her approach to the self-portrait as significant (2).

Painter-Etcher Movement
During the nineteenth century, artists such as Hale were instrumental in reviving etching in America and Europe and restoring the significance of this technical medium. At the forefront of the Etching Revival of Hale’s time was artist Abbott McNeill Whistler, who set the standard for new generation of etchers. Gabrielle DeVaux Clements first introduced Ellen Day Hale to etching while the pair was traveling in Europe together. In terms of the etching process, Hale, like her contemporaries, used copper plates to produce clean, well-defined impressions. Hale experimented with a variety of etching techniques, including hard-ground, soft-ground, aquatint, and color inking (1). In the etching medium, Hale worked on a more intimate basis, using etches to document her travels through the U.S, Europe, and the Middle East. Some of Hale’s most accomplished prints include The Willow Whistle, produced using hard-ground etching, and First Night in Venice, which utilized the soft-ground process.

Legacy
Ellen Day Hale played a major role as a mentor for a younger generation of aspiring women artists. She provided the next group of New England female artists with encouragement and concrete advice, cautioning them “against being to influenced by any one of their instructions…a fault common among artists of our sex” (3). Hale not only taught classes for female artists, both with Helen Knowlton and on her own, but she also hosted informal gatherings where likeminded women could discuss art. Included in this group of young artists was Hale’s sister-in-law, Lilian Westcott Hale. Lilian and many other female artists benefitted greatly from Hale’s support and guidance.

Hale died in Brookline, Massachusetts, aged 85. Her works were shown in the latter part of the 20th century and early 21st century, in group exhibitions and in solo exhibitions of her work in 1989 to 1990 and in 2013's "Wanderer: Travel Prints by Ellen Day Hale".[1] Ellen Day Hale’s legacy is left in her not only in her paintings and etchings, but also in the acceptance she helped gain for women artists.