An important member of the Boston School, Lilian Westcott Hale won national recognition for her portraits, figures, landscapes, and interiors.

Born in Hartford, Connecticut, she studied at the Hartford Art School and at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. After marrying the painter and critic Philip Leslie Hale in 1901, she lived in Boston before settling in Dedham, Massachusetts, in 1909. She exhibited in the major national annuals throughout the United States, winning many honors, including major prizes at the Panama -Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco (1915), the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (1923), and the National Academy of Design (1924, l927). Although she painted many oils, Hale was best known for the exquisite drawings she produced in charcoal, pencil, and silverpoint, executed in a distinctive style characterized by delicate, vertical strokes. Her work in this vein attracted admiration from many of her peers, including the painter Edmund C. Tarbell, who described her drawings as "perfectly beautiful, . . . They belong to our old friends Leonardo, Holbein and Ingres."

Biography courtesy of Roughton Galleries, www.antiquesandfineart.com/roughton