Mary Louise Fairchild MacMonnies Low (1858-1946) American, Oil on Canvas, Portrait of Two Children. Signed upper right. Fantastic portrait of two children sitting on a couch, potentially Mary's children. 

Overall Size: 54 x 44 in. 

Sight Size: 50 x 40 in. 

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

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