Mary Louise Fairchild MacMonnies (1858-1946) French, Oil on Canvas "Garden in Giverny". Titled "Garden in Giverny" (artists wife). Signed in the lower right M MacMonnies. Impressionistic painting depicting a serene garden scene. The composition features a beautifully landscaped garden with a circular fountain at its center, surrounded by vibrant red and pink flowers. The pathways wind through the lush greenery, leading to a wooden bench where a woman dressed in white sits in quiet contemplation. Towering trees with dense foliage frame the scene, providing shade and depth, while a soft, atmospheric background suggests a distant landscape beyond the garden. 

An exceptional example of the artists wife in their garden in the rear of their 16th century French Monastery, a similar example exists by the artists first wife Mary and is hung in the Vernon Museum Giverny. The exuberant colors and exceptional highlighting of the landscape is one of the finest known examples to exist by the artist.

The collection comes from the Estate of Don Huber, a North Shore Long Island Community of Glen Head, New York. 
We suspect this collection likely came by descent through the artists family when they returned to the United States. 

Period French stretcher along with the original lining identifying a Parisian canvas maker.  Visible stretcher bar wear to the canvas on the perimeter. A skore line exists from the stretcher bar approximately 1/2 an inch below the signature. Very little craquelure or cupping. Appears to be the original stretcher.

Overall Size: 27 x 37 1/2 in. 

Sight Size: 21 x 31 1/2 in. 

#9479

Mary Louise Fairchild (1858-1946) was an accomplished American painter. Born in Connecticut and raised in St. Louis, she studied at the St. Louis School of Fine Arts under Halsey C. Ives, where she excelled, even becoming the school's first female faculty member.
Ives facilitated a scholarship for her to study in Paris, where she attended the Académie Julian and learned from masters like Carolus-Duran, adopting a bright, decorative style. In Paris, she met and married sculptor Frederick MacMonnies.
She achieved significant success, exhibiting at the Paris Salon and winning medals at the Paris Exposition Universelle. Her portrait "Berthe" sold for $186,700 in 2004. 
As a student, Fairchild was exemplary, winning the Wayman Crow medal in 1880 as the best drawing student for that year. She became a frequent contributor to the bimonthly student publication, Palette Scrapings (see illustrations), which students illustrated with original sketches.

Mary MacMonnies also embarked on a period of productivity and success: actively exhibiting at the Paris Salon, winning bronze medals in 1889 and 1900 at the Paris Exposition Universelle. Altogether, said fellow artist Eleanor Greatorex in an 1893 profile, her portraits and genre paintings soon placed her “among the strongest and best-known American painters in Paris.”

Eventually, they had three children: Berthe (1895), Marjorie (1897), and Ronald (1899), who died of meningitis two years later. But their lives increasingly diverged, as Frederick traveled to his Paris studio for large projects; he also had a long-running affair with another American, who bore his son. Meanwhile, muralist Will Low (1853–1932) had become smitten with Mary and spent time in Giverny, accompanied by his long-suffering wife.

In 1909, this situation came to a head when Frederick filed for divorce and Will’s wife died, generously urging him to “look after” Mary MacMonnies. He did just that, marrying her that same year. Two months later, they and her two daughters boarded a ship for the United States, where they settled happily in a Bronxville, New York, artists’ colony. Mary Low never saw Frederick MacMonnies again, and at Will’s urging even moved to expunge the MacMonnies name from her previous work.

Toward the end of her life, Mary Fairchild Low painted lovely portraits, including one of Fanny Stevenson, widow of Will’s friend, the writer Robert Louis Stevenson. When she died in 1946, her New York Times obituary was titled, simply but fittingly: “Mrs. Mary F. Low, 88: Long Was An Artist.” - From AskArt

Visible stretcher bar wear to the canvas on the perimeter. A skore line exists from the stretcher bar approximately 1/2 an inch below the signature and vertically on the right side of the painting along with a vertical stretcher bar lines which runs approximately 2/3 of the way up the canvas. Otherwise in good condition with extremely little craquelure given the age of this painting. Very little craquelure or cupping. Appears to be the original stretcher.