Page "Abbott Handerson Thayer" Paragraph 5

Life became all but unbearable for Thayer and his wife during the early 1880s, when two of their small children died unexpectedly, just one year apart.

Emotionally devastated, they spent the next several years relocating from place to place.

Although he was not yet secure financially, Thayer's growing reputation resulted in more portrait commissions than he could accept.

Among his sitters were Mark Twain and Henry James, but the subjects of many of his paintings were the three remaining Thayer children, Mary, Gerald and Gladys.