Hale was born in Boston, the son of prominent minister
Edward Everett Hale, the brother of artist
Ellen Day Hale, and was related to
Nathan Hale and
Harriet Beecher Stowe. He studied at the School of the
Museum of Fine Arts in Boston under
Edmund Tarbell, and with
Kenyon Cox and
J. Alden Weir at the
Art Students League of New York. Beginning in 1887, he studied in Paris for five years, and during the summers painted at
Giverny, where he was influenced by the palette and brushwork of
Claude Monet. In the 1890s he painted his most experimental works, which evidenced an interest in
Neo-impressionism and
Symbolism. Hale returned to Boston in 1893 and spent the summers of 1894, 1895, 1896, 1898 and 1899 working in
Matunuck, RI. During this period, he formed a summer school in
Matunuck, RI and created his most experimental work. Formerly engaged to
Ethel Reed, he instead married fellow artist
Lilian Westcott Hale in 1902, and they rented adjoining studios in Boston. Hale taught at the Museum School in Boston, as well as the
Metropolitan Museum of Art and the
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts; among his Boston pupils was
Mary Bradish Titcomb. He wrote art criticism and published
Jan Vermeer of Delft in 1913, the first monograph on the artist published in the United States. ==Gallery==