Mary Louise Fairchild, American 1858-1946 ‘Garden Chat’
SOLD.
‘Garden Chat’
By Mary Louise Fairchild, American 1858-1946.
71 x 57 in. oil on canvas, signed l. l. and dated 1887.
Housed in an exquisite carved and gesso gilt-wood frame.
Mary L. Fairchild, of America’s finest impressionists, studied art at the St. Louis School of Fine Art and at Acadamie Julian in Paris. She married in 1888 and resided in Paris, spending summers in Giverny. She later divorced and married painter Will Low in 1909. . Fairchild’s work reflects several phases of development. In the beginning she worked in a sunlit style reminiscent of her professor at the Acadamie Julian. Later, however, her work became more tonal and misty. She painted her portraits in very dark colors after her second marriage but gradually returned to a lighter, Impressionistic palette in the final phase of her career. In 2004 $186,700 was paid for a portrait of a girl by Mary L. Fairchild at Christie’s in New York.