Influential Boston critic, painter and teacher Philip L. Hale spent the summer of 1902 at scenic Niagara Falls painting alongside his student and new bride, Lilian Westcott Hale. With a raking view of the waterfall from their hotel room balcony, the Hales enjoyed a summer-long honeymoon in painting bliss. Philip executed at least three known completed oils during this period, and captured sunlight sparkling on the water in his own unique Impressionist approach.

Born into a native Boston Brahmin family, Philip enrolled at his city’s Museum School in 1883, not knowing that he would become an instructor there himself just a few years later. He formed his allegiance to Impressionism during the early 1890s when he joined Monet and his artist colony at Giverny, and he remained closely dedicated to this style of landscape paintings throughout his career. In contrast, Philip’s figurative works involved an innovative and experimental approach more closely affiliated to Neo-Impressionism and Symbolism, and these works attracted the criticism of many contemporary viewers. One of the most avant garde of the Boston School painters, Philip emerged as an artist of major significance and would influence generations of Boston painters to come.

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