Mary Elizabeth (Sears) Kellogg

Polly (Ethel) Thayer (1904–2006)
Date1945
MediumOil on canvas
InscriptionInscribed lower right: Polly Thayer ’45
Credit LineAthenaeum purchase, 2016 (UR374)
Object NumberUR374
Polly (Ethel) Thayer (1904–2006)
Date1945
MediumOil on canvas
InscriptionInscribed lower right: Polly Thayer ’45
Credit LineAthenaeum purchase, 2016 (UR374)
Object NumberUR374
Polly (Ethel) Thayer (1904–2006)
Dateabout 1943
MediumOil on canvas
Dimensions24 1/4 x 20 1/8 in. (61.6 x 51.1 cm) Frame: 30 3/4 x 26 3/4 in. (78.1 x 67.9 cm)
DescriptionWith several recent acquisitions of the artist’s work, the Athenæum’s collection now contains six paintings by Boston artist Polly Thayer. Five of these are portraits (including a self-portrait and a portrait of Thayer’s husband, Donald Starr) and one is a small landscape. As the first genre painting by Thayer to enter the collection, Shopping for Furs adds unexpected depth to the institution’s holdings of her work. Undoubtedly posed by a carefully selected model, the painting is a brilliant study in the numbing exhaustion brought on by the mundane, ultimately meaningless activity of shopping for luxury goods.
Athenæum purchase, 2010
Object NumberUR327
Polly (Ethel) Thayer (1904–2006)
Dateabout 1957
MediumOil on canvas
Dimensions15 x 24 in. (38.1 x 61 cm)
Credit LineGift of Rachel Brown in memory of William Slater Brown, 2010
Object NumberUR330
Polly (Ethel) Thayer (1904–2006)
Date1935
MediumOil on canvas
Dimensions50 1/4 x 35 1/4 in. (127.6 x 89.5 cm)
DescriptionDonald Starr (1901–1992) was an accomplished yachtsman who, when Polly Thayer met him in 1933, was in the process of circumnavigating the globe. Thayer joined him and the two were soon married. Thayer painted this portrait the following year, just as Starr was beginning his career as a lawyer.
Gift of Polly Thayer Starr, 1995
Object NumberUR279
Polly (Ethel) Thayer (1904–2006)
Dateabout 1928
MediumOil on canvas
Dimensions25 x 21 in. (63.5 x 53.3 cm)
Credit LineGift of Polly Thayer Starr, 1995
Object NumberUR278
Polly (Ethel) Thayer (1904–2006)
Date1943
MediumOil on canvas
Dimensions40 1/4 x 35 1/4 in. (102.2 x 89.5 cm)
Credit LineGift of Polly Thayer Starr, 1995
Object NumberUR277
Polly (Ethel) Thayer (1904–2006)
Daten.d.
MediumOil on canvas
Dimensions26 x 20 in. (66 x 50.8 cm)
DescriptionPolly Thayer painted this portrait of her friend, writer and historian Mark Antony DeWolfe Howe (1864–1960), at the Howe family’s summer cottage in Bristol, Rhode Island, in 1933. (That year Howe became the Director of the Boston Athenæum.) Thayer later remembered that, to relieve the boredom during the sittings, the subject’s son Mark Howe read aloud from Henry James’s The American Scene. The experience, Thayer wrote, “was one of the happiest of my life.”
Gift of Reginald Allen, 1982
Object NumberUR175