1881-1963. An impressionist painter also greatly admired for her pastels and drawings, Lilian Westcott Hale is closely associated with the Boston School of painting. Although she was born in Hartford, Connecticut, and studied there as well as with William Merritt Chase at his Shinnecock, Long Island, outdoor painting school, she subsequently attended Boston's Museum of Fine Arts School. There, she took classes with noted impressionists Edmund Tarbell and Philip Leslie Hale, and married the latter in 1901. She excelled in producing refined scenes of women in interiors (the subject matter particularly associated with Boston's early 20th-century artistic community) and won a variety of prestigious awards for her work.

In addition to her figural works, Lilian Hale was an accomplished painter of portraits and still lifes. She also occasionally painted landscapes, particularly snow and garden views looking outside the window of her Dedham, Massachusetts, home. Her oil paintings are softly painted and atmospheric, evoking feelings of calm and familiarity. Hale's delicate style was well suited to pastel and charcoal, and her works in these media are characterized by thin, precise strokes and a high degree of finish.