The Sisters

The Sisters is an 1884 oil on canvas painting by Abbott Handerson Thayer. It depicts Bessie and Clara Stillman, and was commissioned from Thayer by their brother, the banker James Stillman. It has been cited as one of Thayer's best works, a composition of grandeur.

After studying in New York City and Paris, Thayer took a studio in Brooklyn in 1880, and traveled often, summering for the next few years in Nantucket or Pittsfield, Massachusetts; in 1881 he went to Hartford, Connecticut to paint Mark Twain, and in 1882 he spent the winter in a cottage owned by Henry Ward Beecher in Peekskill, New York. In 1883 Thayer rented a home at Cornwell-on-Hudson, and built a studio on James Stillman's property. It was there that he painted two portraits of the sisters, one of Bessie alone, completed in 1883, and the double portrait, which he worked on until January 1884. Together, the paintings are quite different from his previous portraits, which had featured more opulent wardrobes in keeping with the fashionable style of the Paris Salon— an art reviewer had found fault with the "poor taste" of the glamorous finery of Thayer's 1881 Portrait of Mrs. William F. Milton, and thereafter the artist avoided ostentatious dress.

Dressed in black and set against a muted green background, the sisters are seen in a doorway. Bessie stands in front, her arms down and hands clasped in front of her. Clara stands directly behind, and wraps her left hand around Bessie's waist while resting her upraised right hand on the entryway's frame. The sisters are noble in comportment and remote in expression. The unusual positioning of their figures implies a complex and intimate relationship.

Though the overall impression is successful, the painting has been faulted for lapses in execution. The drawing of Bessie's right forearm is meager, Clara's left hand is weak, and the brushwork throughout is labored. Commissioned portraits were expected to be more highly finished, and although The Sisters was given a place of honor at the Society of American Artists exhibition of 1884, it received harsh criticism for the perceived "flimsiness" of its details. Technical faults notwithstanding, the nobility of its composition has been compared to the portraits of Thomas Eakins.



For their elegance and restrained tones, Thayer's portraits of the mid 1880s, and particularly The Sisters, have been cited as influential to the work of his younger colleague Dennis Miller Bunker.



The moral of the story is that no matter how skilled you are, there are people out there who make it their business to tell you how much better your work could be. And while this article remembers the name of the artist, it has trouble remembering the names of any critics.

It's very easy to tear something down. It's also easy to point at something that has already weathered the storm and say, "this is what greatness is." It's far more difficult to have the confidence and drive to actually create something new. That's why everyone's a critic, and not one of them has ever made something better.

This was a pointless tangent, but I liked this painting, and was extremely annoyed by the blurb. Also proof that hipster as a concept has been and will be around forever. Psh, I liked him before his brushwork was labored. Tch, I've seen better left hands from Matisse, myehhhhh

UGH! I JUST MADE UP FAKE 1800s HIPSTERS AND I HATE THEM!