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Lilian Westcott Hale
(1881-1963)

Lilian Westcott Hale's mentor Edmund Tarbell exclaimed after seeing her drawings in the one-woman 1908 Boston show, “Your drawings are perfectly beautiful—as fine as anything could be. They belong with our old friends Leonardo, Holbein and Ingres, and are to me the finest modern drawings I have ever seen.” Indeed, Hale's drawings are rendered with remarkable sensitivity and demonstrate a distinctive poetic tenderness.  She was one of the great draftsman of the Boston School, excelling particularly in the charcoal medium.

Hale's choice of subject matter, gentile interiors and scenes from nature, reflect the taste of the day; the advice of her mentors, who included Edmund Tarbell, William Merritt Chase, and Phillip Leslie Hale (later her husband); and her personal preference for such themes.  Her refined and delicate drawing style lent itself perfectly to her subjects.  She's able to capture an innate sense of beauty without looking cloying or sentimental.