Self-Portrait

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TitleSelf-Portrait

Artist Mary Fairchild MacMonnies Low (1858 - 1946)

Daten.d.

MediumOil on canvas

DimensionsUnframed: 29 1/4 × 25 1/2 in. Framed: 39 × 35 × 2 3/4 in.

SubmissionANA diploma presentation, February 4, 1907

Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY

Object number791-P

Label TextLow’s composition references Fragonard and the French Baroque style. She portrays herself with a sense of playfulness, as a beautiful, stylish woman attired in a Baroque costume. Our eye is drawn by the large, dangling necklace to her voluptuous figure. There is a teasing defiance perhaps to the values she grew up with in St. Louis, or to the perceived lack of seriousness attributed to a beautiful woman artist. Low was a brilliant and successful artist, and was appointed at the age of 24 as the first woman faculty member at Washington University in St. Louis, where a scholarship in her honor was created to enable her to study in Paris in 1885. Low married two artists, bore three children, and worked continuously throughout her long life.