 Mary Fairchild MacMonnies is primarily known as Mary Louise Fairchild
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Biography from The Caldwell Gallery - I:
| Mary Fairchild Low studied art at the St. Louis School of Fine Art and at Acadamie Julian in Paris. She married in 1888 and resided in Paris, spending summers in Giverny. She later divorced her first husband and married painter Will Low in 1909. Her portraiture received acclaim at the 1893 Chicago Exposition.
Low's work reflects several phases of development. In the beginning she worked in a sunlit style reminiscent of her professor at Acadamie Julian. Later, however, her work became more tonal and misty. Low painted her portraits in very dark colors after her second marriage but gradually returned to a lighter, Impressionistic palette in the final phase of her career.
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Biography from AskART:
| Born in New Haven, Connecticut, Mary Fairchild was a painter of both
light-filled and tonalist figure, portraits, and landscapes, and won
numerous awards and recognition including membership in the National
Academy of Design.
She was of "blue-blood" lineage as a
descendant of Governor William Bradford of the "Mayflower." When
her parents moved her to St. Louis, she began art study at the St.
Louis School of Fine Art, and then she studied in Paris at the Academie
Julian and with Carolus Duran.
In 1888, she married sculptor
Frederick MacMonnies, and they lived and entertained fashionably in
Paris where among their frequent guests was James McNeill Whistler. The
couple summered with their two daughters in a 14th-century monastery in
Giverny where they became good friends with Claude Monet and his
family. A next door neighbor was Isadora Duncan, who danced nude
in her garden.
Both she and her husband earned high
recognition at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. She had a large mural,
displayed opposite one by Mary Cassatt, and two paintings, and her
husband's large fountain was the central feature of the exhibition.
Frederick
MacMonnies left Mary for one of his art students, and her second
husband was Will Hickok Low, a mural painter, and they lived in
Bronxville, New York from 1909 to 1932. Bitter and feeling
disgraced from her divorce, she dropped all personal references to the
name MacMonnies.
She later returned to New Haven where she
died. Between 1886 and 1907, she exhibited regularly at the Paris
Salon. She also exhibited in 15 exhibitions at the Art Institute
of Chicago.
Source:
David Zellman, 300 Years of American Art |
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