An influential critic, writer and teacher, Philip Leslie Hale was an American Impressionist with an experimental, avant-garde approach to painting. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of author Edward Everett Hale and the younger brother of artist Ellen Day Hale, Philip was raised in a lively intellectual atmosphere. He probably received his first artistic training from his paternal aunt Susan Hale, after which he entered the Boston Museum of Fine Arts School under Edmund Tarbell, an American Impressionist painter who greatly influenced Hale’s style. A year later in 1884, the young artist moved to New York City, where he enrolled at the Art Students League and studied under Kenyon Cox and J. Alden Weir. There, his fellow students included Theodore Butler and William Howard “Peggy” Hart.

In 1887, Hale traveled to Paris with Theodore Butler and Susan Hale, where he furthered his artistic training at Ecole des Beaux-Arts and Académie Julian. During this first year, he studied with Jules-Joseph Lefebvre, Gustave Boulanger and Henri Lucien Doucet. In his spare time, he visited numerous galleries and museums, absorbing the developments of French Impressionism. The following summer of 1888, Hale visited Giverny for the first time, where he worked and socialized with American expatriates, including Theodore Robinson, John Leslie Breck, and Theodore Wendel. Five years earlier, the celebrated French Impressionist Claude Monet settled in the area and had since attracted a number of young followers, including Butler who bought a home there in the 1890s.

Woman with Red Sash is an Impressionistic image full of energy, light and color. Although the woman’s dress is white, Hale uses tones of blue and yellow to create the effect of shadow, light and movement. Her face and dress use some of the same green and yellow tones that are in the background, but her red scarf and belt contrast to the other softer pastel colors. Hale is well known for images such as this one, which show beautiful woman in a glowing, golden light. He often used red accessories to add a pop of color to his paintings, such as he did in Crimson Rambler (1908, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts) and The Red Necklace (Private collection).