Detail from The Canal, Amsterdam, 1889, James McNeill Whistler, The Hunterian, University of Glasgow

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Margaret Curzon Hale

Alias: Mrs H. D. Hale
Nationality: British
Date of birth: 1872
Place of birth: Newry, Down, Ireland
Date of death: 1948
Category: sitter

Identity:

Margaret, daughter of John P. Marquand and Margaret Searle Curson, married the American born architect Herbert Dudley Hale (1866-1908). They had six children including Herbert Dudley Hale, Jr.; Russell Marquand Hale; Robert Beverly Hale; Margaret Curzon Hale; Edward Everett Hale and Laura Walker Hale.

Life:

Hale graduated from Harvard, and later attended the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris for four years. In 1893 Hale applied for a US passport for himself, his wife, and their son Herbert (born in Paris in 1893). They were back in New York in July 1894. However, Mrs Hale must have returned to Europe shortly afterwards.

Mrs Hale posed as a replacement for Lady Eden, after Whistler, having disagreed with Sir William Eden over the amount and method of payment rubbed out the original figure in Brown and Gold: Portrait of Lady Eden y408. During the Civil Tribunal court hearing in Paris on 27 February 1895, Mrs Hale sat next to Whistler looking, he told his wife, 'very pretty' ([3 March 1895], GUW #06626).

The Hales returned to live and work in America: and are recorded at the time of the 1900 US census. Hale established a firm in Boston with James Gamble Rogers, under the name of Hale & Rogers. He also maintained an association with New York architect Henry G. Morse, and it was under this firm that the work of Hale & Morse was executed.

A miniature portrait of Mrs Hale in 1917, Margie in White, by Laura Coombs Hills, is in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (51.1933).

Bibliography:

'Margaret Curzon Hale', GENi website. Ancestry.com website. 'Hale, Herbert Dudley (1866 - 1908) ARCHITECT', Philadelphia Architects website.