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Channing Hare 1899-1976 Debutante Reclining on Sofa Oil on Canvas 34 by 40 inches Signed and dated 1941 lower right

Hare studied at the Art Students League and with Robert Henri and George Bellows. He exhibited at the Corcoran Gallery, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Society of Independent Artists. Channing was born in New York, New York. He was a portrait artist of note who was gay and lived in Ogunquit, Maine, and in Palm Beach, Florida.

The flamboyant society painter Channing Hare was often associated with Mountfort Coolidge, with whom he operated a small antiques business. The two men shared a home on Pine Hill North,Ogunquit, Maine where among Hare's household treasures was a not-so-housebroken but very handsome black and white Belgian hare.

OAA members Channing Hare and Mountfort Coolidge, although respected and successful painters In their own right, were identified more with the summer society life than it's art colony by many artists and local residents. Close friends, fellow artists and even business partners, the two men were synonymous with glamour, flamboyance, and chic.

Despite Hare's seeming preoccupation with the gathering of interesting people for elaborate cocktail parties, he was a brilliant society portrait painter who reportedly commanded between $3,000 and $10,000 for a painting, top prices in those times. His clients Included such noted Palm Beach and New York socialites as Phyllis Rhinelander and' Alexander Woolcott, comedienne Beatrice Lily, actress Florence Nash, and authors Booth Tarkington and Kenneth Roberts.

He died in Palm Beach, Florida in 1976.

A Palm Beach personality for more than four decades, artist Channing Hare's portraits were in demand, from Fifth Avenue to Ocean Boulevard.