Lilian Clarke Westcott Hale (1880-1963)
American Impressionist, Renowned Portrait Artist
 Lilian Westcott Hale, Alice (Sit-by-the-Fire), Oil on canvas, 1925, North Carolina Museum of Art
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 Lilian Westcott Hale, On Christmas Day in the Morning, Charcoal and color pencil on paper, 1924 |
The Boston painter William Paxton said that Lilian Westcott Hale drew with butterfly’s wings, and his colleague Edmund Tarbell credited her work with giving him “one of the most inspiring hours [he had] ever spent.” Admired equally for her elegant charcoal drawings and for her graceful oils, Hale (1880-1963) was one of Boston’s finest artists in the early twentieth century. She believed in craftsmanship and in beauty, and while her aesthetic creed was traditional, her ambition to succeed as a professional artist was not.
So begins the catalogue for a 1999 exhibit of Lilian Westcott Hale paintings and drawings at Regis College Carney Museum in Weston Massachusetts, a remarkable collection of oils depicting domestic life at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. Although working in the shadow of the famous Edward Everett Hale Family she married into, her early work, reminiscent of American Impressionist Mary Cassatt, was highly regarded, and later in life her portrait work was in high demand (view the full catalogue).
Lilian Clarke Westcott was born in Hartford, Connecticut, on December 7, 1881, the third daughter of Edward Gardiner Westcott and Harriet Louise Clarke. She was a descendant of Stukely and Juliana Westcott in the ninth generation: Lilian Clarke9 Westcott, Edward Gardiner8, Gardiner7, James6, Stukely5, Stukely4, Stukely3, Jeremiah2, Stukely1. Lilian married Phillip Leslie Hale on June 11, 1902. She died on November 7, 1963, 32 years after the death of Phillip.
Read Joan Archer, “The Life and Work of Lilian Westcott Hale,” American Art Review, 1999:
Artistically gifted, she decided at a very young age to devote her life to art. As a young student at the Hartford Art School in Connecticut, Westcott’s talents were noticed by William Merritt Chase, one of the country’s most influential art teachers and a member of a group of Impressionists known as the Ten American Painters. In the summer of 1899, she studied with Chase at his summer school at Shinnecock, Long Island. Then in 1900 with a scholarship from the Hartford Art Society, Westcott began her studies at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. At Boston’s prestigious Museum School, she would undertake a rigorous academic curriculum and receive excellent professional training. Westcott loved her studies and her life as an art student. She was considered to have great promise; at Chase’s recommendation, she was placed in an advanced painting class with Edmund Tarbell. Her friendship with Philip Hale, a prominent faculty member at the Museum School and Boston artist, grew steadily and during her second year in Boston, they became involved in a deeper relationship. In 1902, after some hesitation and soul searching, she married Hale. Her decision to marry surprised many of her professors and even disappointed some of her fellow students who now questioned her commitment to the pursuit of a career in art. Click here to read the full article.
 Lilian Westcott Hale, Nancy and the Map of Europe, Oil on canvas, 1919 |
 Lilian Westcott Hale, Charcoal portrait of her grandson William Wertenbaker, 1955 |
Phillip Hale 1865-1931
Phillip Leslie Hale, Lilian Westcott’s teacher at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, then husband and always a strong advocate for her art and vision, was born on May 21, 1865, in Boston, Massachusetts, the sixth child of Edward Everett Hale and Emily Baldwin Perkins. In the 1890s, Phillip and his father, an aunt, a sister and assorted friends comprised the Matunuck School of Painting centered on the family’s summer home in South County, Rhode Island. The Hale House is situated on a glacial moraine overlooking farmland and Rhode Island’s south coast, providing subject matter for idyllic landscapes and seascapes and studies of rural life.
Sources:
- Erica E. Hirshler, “Drawn with Butterfly Wings,” The Art of Lilian Westcott Hale (Weston, Massachusetts, Regis College, 1999). Catalogue accompanying Great Expectations exhibit of Hale’s painting at the Carney Gallery, Regis College, April 23 to May 7, 1999, curated by John C. Hagan.
- Joan Archer, “The Life and Work of Lilian Westcott Hale,” American Art Review (Vol. XI, 1999, No. 2), pages 126-131.
- Lindsay Leard-Coolidge, A Sense of Place, Painters of Matunuck, Rhode Island, 1873-1941, (New London, Conn.: Lyman Allyn Art Museum, 2010.
- Historic Hale House, 2625 Commodore Perry Highway, South Kingstown, RI 02879 (https://halehouseri.org/)
- FamilySearch.org: Lilian Westcott Hale ID KN8P-MZQ.
Revised August 22, 2022. Comments, corrections and additions are always welcome at historian@sswda.org.