Mary Harvey Tannahill was an American painter, printmaker, embroiderer and batik maker.
28 Facts About Mary Tannahill
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Mary Tannahill studied in the United States and Europe and spent 30 summers in Provincetown, Massachusetts, with the artist colony there.
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Mary Tannahill was instructed by Blanche Lazzell there and assumed the style of the Provincetown Printers.
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Mary Tannahill exhibited her works through a number of artist organizations.
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Mary Tannahill's parents were Sallie Jones Sims and Robert Tannahill, a Confederate soldier and businessman who was active in Petersburg, Virginia, and New York City.
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Mary Tannahill moved the family to New York in 1865 and they lived at 44 East 65th Street.
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Mary Tannahill's father worked as a cotton factor and between 1880 and 1882 was president of the New York Cotton Exchange.
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Mary Tannahill early displayed an interest in art that was fostered and encouraged by her parents and due to the family's wealth, she was comfortable pursuing her interest.
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Robert Tannahill died in 1883, leaving behind eight children, of whom Mary was the eldest.
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Mary Tannahill studied with various teachers, including Kenyon Cox, John Henry Twachtman, Harry Siddons Mowbray, J Alden Weir, and Arthur Wesley Dow.
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Mary Tannahill had just returned from his studies with Claude Monet in Giverny, France.
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Mary Tannahill studied art in Europe before World War I, including Germany, where she was harassed because she was assumed to be English.
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Mary Tannahill returned to the New York and began to spend the summers on Cape Cod and in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where she later studied with Blanche Lazzell.
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Mary Tannahill came to be known first for her miniatures painted with watercolor on ivory, a medium in which she met with some success.
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Mary Tannahill had an early interest in photography and submitted a photograph to the Competition for Women Photographers in 1912.
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Mary Tannahill then painted with tempera and oils, and explored creating works of art with embroidery, batik, and woodblock printing, in the white-line style of the Provincetown Printers.
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Mary Tannahill continued showing with the Provincetown Art Association almost yearly until 1938, displaying woodblock prints at various exhibits.
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Mary Tannahill soon became a close friend of William and Marguerite Zorach and Robert Henri as well, through them becoming introduced to the work of the Art Students League of New York.
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Mary Tannahill exhibited more of her work with the Society two more times.
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Stylistically, Mary Tannahill's work derived some of its influence from folk art, which was combined with modernism.
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Mary Tannahill evinced interest in continued artistic growth throughout her career, absorbing influences such as Cubism and Precisionism in some of her later works.
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Mary Tannahill was an early member of the National Association of Women Painters and sculptors, and was active in a variety of North Carolina artists' organizations as well, including the North Carolina Professional Artists' Club, of which she eventually served as vice-president.
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Mary Tannahill's work is at the Bibliotheque nationale de France.
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Mary Tannahill, described as having been tall, blond, and striking in appearance in her youth, never married.
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Mary Tannahill was a Christian Scientist who believed in suffrage for women.
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Mary Tannahill lived in New York by 1914, giving her address as Van Dyck Studios at 939 Eighth Avenue.
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Mary Tannahill spent the last years of her life and died in Warrenton.
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Since her death, Mary Tannahill's work has continued to be included in exhibitions, such as Eight Southern Women at the Greenville County Museum of Art in 1986 and Nine from North Carolina in 1989 at the National Museum of Women in the Arts and in a traveling show, like the exhibit sponsored by the Fayetteville Museum of Art in North Carolina.