Mary Tannahill

At 88 years old, Mary Tannahill physical status not available right now. We will update Mary Tannahill's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

She came to be known first for her miniatures painted with watercolor on ivory, a medium in which she met with some success. The Philadelphia Society of Miniature Painters exhibited her works early in her career and she was a member of the Pennsylvania Society of Miniature Painters. She also had an early interest in photography and submitted a photograph to the Competition for Women Photographers in 1912.

She then painted with tempera and oils, and explored creating works of art with embroidery, batik, and woodblock printing, in the white-line style of the Provincetown Printers.

In 1916, she exhibited at the second annual show of the Provincetown Art Association and spent more than 30 summers at the artist's colony in Provincetown. She continued showing with the Provincetown Art Association almost yearly until 1938, displaying woodblock prints at various exhibits. She soon became a close friend of William and Marguerite Zorach and Robert Henri as well, through them becoming introduced to the work of the Art Students League of New York. In 1917, the Society of Independent Artists held their first show, in which two of her pieces were displayed. She exhibited more of her work with the Society two more times. By 1921, she exhibited her work An American Batik at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. It was also an example in the book First Lessons in Batik published in 1921.

Stylistically, Tannahill's work derived some of its influence from folk art, which was combined with modernism. She evinced interest in continued artistic growth throughout her career, absorbing influences such as Cubism and Precisionism in some of her later works. A Raleigh newspaper critic, writing in The News & Observer in 1937, called her an "unusual painter of familiar objects in the modern manner", and she was sometimes described as an "artist's artist"; she herself said that "her work was considered modern but not overly so". The "Eight Southern Women" exhibit, held in 1986 at the Museum of Art in Greenville County, South Carolina and the Gibbes Art Gallery in Charleston, included her works.

Her work was displayed over her career at the Panama–Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco and at shows by the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors. Pieces also appeared in exhibits at the Brooklyn Museum, the Art Students League of New York, the Knoedler Galleries, the American Society of Miniature Painters, and the American and New York Watercolor Clubs. She was an early member of the National Association of Women Painters and sculptors, and was active in a variety of North Carolina artists' organizations as well, including the North Carolina Professional Artists' Club, of which she eventually served as vice-president.

Tannahill's paintings and fabrics can be found in the Newark Museum, Greenville County Museum of Art, Greenville, South Carolina, Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University, and in many private collections. Her work is at the Bibliothèque nationale de France. A collection of her work is on display in Warrenton, at the Green-Polk-McAuslan House within the Warrenton Historic District.

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