Although the changing cultural and social landscape of Boston provided many new opportunities for women, female students were still segregated from their male counterparts.

Hunt and Knowlton encouraged a new style and used unique teaching methods, such as interpretive sketching, which had an important artistic influence on Hale.

Knowlton especially promoted a sense of community within the class of female artists, and the group of women relied upon each other, rather than their husbands or other men, for professional and personal support.

[5] Hale attended the Academy while it was directed by Thomas Eakins, who, like William Rimmer, emphasized the study of human anatomy as the basis for figure painting.

[2] She quickly enrolled in formal programs, first studying drawing with Emmanuel Frémiet at the Jardin des Plantes, and then going on to train at Académie Colarossi.

Hunt and Knowlton's "rather loosely structured school had not prepared Hale for the rigorous teaching style of the Académie Colarossi, where she found the 'general work of the class...neither interesting nor inspiring.

Her instructors included Rudolphe Julian, Tony Robert-Fleury, Jules Joseph Lefebvre, Gustave-Rudolphe Boulanger and William-Adolphe Bouguereau.

Because young women were not admitted to the most prestigious Parisian institutes like the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, they were left with no choice but to enroll in independent academies that charged tuition.

[2] Despite these hardships, Hale preferred Académie Julian to any of the other schools she attended, as she developed a close-knit group of friends who acted as a support system for her.

[2] Hale and Clements' relationship, like other "Boston marriages" of the time, provided the women with personal fulfillment and emotional support as each pursued professional careers as artists.

She and Clements assisted in the organization of the Charleston Etchers' Club, a group established in 1923 to offer instruction on printmaking, encourage intellectual exchange, art criticism, and exhibition planning.

Founding members of the club include Charleston Renaissance artists Elizabeth O'Neill Verner, Alfred Hutty, and Alice Ravenel Huger Smith.

The compositional weight of her hand is also notable because it was extremely rare for artists of any gender to portray themselves looking directly at the viewer without any tools to identify their profession.

When Hale exhibited Self-Portrait in Boston, perhaps for the first time, in 1887, a critic, meaning to compliment her work, described it as displaying "a man's strength in the treatment and handling of her subjects."

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where the self-portrait is located, later commented, "Hale's forthright presentation, her strong dark colors, and the direct manner in which she engages the viewer recall the work of one of the French painters she most admired, Edouard Manet.

"[7] Hale created and displayed, in her own words, an "original and queer" representation of herself, and this daring assertion of identity marks her approach to the self-portrait as significant.

[5] Hale's 1893 portrait, June, which depicts a young woman sewing, wearing a bun and a checked dress, is in the collection of the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

[3] During the nineteenth century, artists such as Hale were instrumental in reviving etching in America and Europe and restoring the significance of this technical medium.

At the forefront of the Etching Revival of Hale's time was artist James Abbott McNeill Whistler,[15] who set the standard for new generation of etchers.

Some of Hale's most accomplished prints include The Willow Whistle, which was produced using hard-ground etching and displayed at the Paris Salon, and First Night in Venice, which used the soft-ground process.