Thayer, Polly, 1904-2006

Polly E. Thayer, 1904-2006, painter of Boston, Mass.

A study for the oil painting "Trying on Furs" in the collection of the Boston Athenaeum.

Polly Thayer (1904- 2006) was a painter and educator in Boston, Mass. Starr spent years studying in art schools and privately in Boston, Provincetown, New York, Madrid, and Paris. She was awarded the Julius Hallgarten Prize from the National Academy of Design and the gold medal at the Boston Tercentenary Exhibition. In 2001, she was the only living artist whose work was part of the Museum of Fine Arts show "A Studio of Her Own: Women Artists in Boston 1870-1940." Thayer's married name was Polly Thayer Starr.

Painter; Boston, Mass.

Painter; Boston, Mass.

Thayer was born in the fashionable Back Bay, the daughter of a dean of the Harvard Law School, educated in prestigious girls' schools, and traveled widely with her mother. She studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and with Philip Hale, and Charles W. Hawthorne. In the mid-1920s in New York she led the life of a socialite much as that of an aspiring artist. She won the National Academy of Design's Hallgarten Prize for painting in 1929 with a large nude, Circles. Through the 1930s she showed frequently in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, and received numerous portrait commissions. Her repertory expanded to include landscapes.