A descendant of Governor William Bradford of the Mayflower, Mary Low spent the four years of the Civil War in New Orleans, where her father worked on telegraphs for the military before the family moved to St. Louis in 1865. Low taught school, a common career for unmarried women at the time, discovering her artistic talents accidentally when aiding her mother, an amateur ivory miniaturist, in tinting photographs. In 1884, she began attending the St. Louis School of Fine Arts part-time, enrolling full-time to study painting under Carl Gurtherz. With the support of Halsey C. Ives, the School's art director, Low won a three year scholarship to study abroad from 1885-1888.
Like most other women artists in Paris, Low entered the Acad‚mie Julian's women's class, where she received criticism from William Bouguereau, Jules Lefebvre and Tony Robert-Fleury. She also began showing at the Salon. In the summer of 1887, Low summered in Picardie, with the class of the English landscape painter Harry Thompson. The following year, she developed her portrait skills under Carolus-Duran.
In late 1887, Low began sharing a studio with Frederick MacMonnies, whom she married in 1888. Mrs. Potter Palmer commissioned Low to execute a mural for the Women's Building at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair following a studio visit in 1891. After almost two years of work on the project, Low traveled to Chicago to oversee the installation of her mural, Primitive Woman, where her husband's The Triumph of the Republic was the central fountain.
Financial security came to the couple after the Fair. Beginning in 1894 they rented a converted 14th century monastery in Giverny during the summer, spending the majority of their time there after 1898. Low's brightly toned and sunlit paintings of her children in countryside surroundings display the influence of impressionism. She joined the Society of American Artists in 1896.
In 1908, after several years of long periods of separation, MacMonnies filed for divorce. Shortly after the divorce became final in 1909, Low married the recently-widowed muralist Will Hicok Low, whom she had met in Giverny in 1901. The couple returned to America in January 1910, whereafter Low executed numerous portrait commissions in an attempt to aid the family's finances. Her style tightened into a more sober, academic rendering of form. Although she never traveled to Europe again, Low spent a few summers with her children in Gloucester. She continued painting until she became an invalid in the last few years of her life.
