Known as Polly, Ethel Thayer was active as a portrait, landscape and still-life painter in Boston in the early 20th century, working at Fenway Studios from 1932 to 1936. Her mediums were watercolor, pastel, and lithography, and her style began as Boston School academic and changed to progressive modern, many of them naive in the tradition of Henri Rousseau.

Thayer was born in Boston, the daughter of Professor Ezra Thayer, who was Dean of the Harvard Law School. Her art studies included drawing at the Museum School of the Fine Arts in Boston, private lessons with Philip Hale, and lessons in Provincetown in the 1920s with Charles Hawthorne and in the summer of 1933 with Hans Hofmann. She also attended Le Grande Ch...