Portrait of a Lady (Mrs. William B. Cabot)

This is a portrait of the wife of William Brooks Cabot, an accomplished civil engineer in Boston and a close friend of the artist’s. Abbott Thayer began working on Mrs. Cabot’s portrait when he was preparing to depart for Cornwall, England. He not only carried the canvas abroad with him, but also took Mrs. Cabot’s dress so he could refer to it as he completed the painting. Thayer exhibited the finished work at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in 1900; two years later, he showed it in Philadelphia with some alterations, about which he wrote to his wife, “I feel that the new hands and right arm I put on . . . at the end made Mrs. C.” (Hobbs, unpublished catalogue entry, SAAM curatorial files, 1978)