Mary Halliday (1866-1957) American, Oil on Canvas. Painting of a young woman in a white dress seated at a desk talking on the telephone. Signed lower right. Southern California studio location and title "On the Telephone" written on back. 

Overall: 26 1/2 X 24 3/4 in. 

Sight: 20 1/2 X 18 3/4 in. 

Depth: 2 in. 

#2699 . 

Mary Hughitt Halliday was born in Cairo, Illinois on Halloween in 1866. Her wealthy family fostered her appreciation for arts from an early age, and she graduated from Vassar in 1888 before going on to study with the American Impressionist William Merritt Chase. In 1897 she traveled to Paris, France, where she continued her studies at both the Académie Carmen and Académie Colagrossi. One of her professors, James MacNeill Whistler, took a particular interest in her and encouraged her to enter her work in the first showing of the American Woman’s Art Association, which led to international acclaim. Attracted to the work of the Vienna Secessionists, she opened a studio in Berlin, and established connections with galleries in Santa Monica, California as well. In the 1910s she was an outspoken pacifist against the first World War, but in the mid 1930s she fled Europe permanently as Hitler rose to power, opening a home studio in Santa Barbara and remaining there the rest of her life. A life-long spinster, she died in relative obscurity in June 1957.